Echoes
by Kibble
Summary: They'll turn your greatest strength into your only weakness. It's Snake and Otacon against the world and things are going to get tough. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima, or Konami, or whatever. Not me.

* * *

Echoes

"It'll be in his office. Can you see it?"

"Yeah." The man eased the door open and slipped into the room, invisible in the inky darkness. The papers lay on the desk as though they meant nothing at all, and he brushed them apart from the others with gloved fingertips before photographing them. And that was it; his task was complete. His stealth cammo crackled briefly, reminding him of limited battery life. "All done. I'm getting out."

"Wait, Snake. I'm picking up a really interesting signal. Are there any guards on that floor?"

"Nope. Only the guy with the torch downstairs." This was, after all, an urban office block, not a remote military outpost. There was one security guard scratching himself in the foyer and a lot of automatically operated cameras, but no armed presence whatsoever. "What've you found, Otacon?"

"I don't know." He had that tone of voice that suggested he was adjusting his glasses excitedly when he should have been running away, the tone of voice that Snake had learned to dread. "Something alive and human-sized. Look, I know this is only a little side quest for us, but the guys who offered to help would be really grateful if we could get some kind of hard evidence of freaky goings-on."

Could've guessed. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just some pictures should be enough." There was a brief pause. "Please?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where is it?"

"Really close to you. The floor above and a few doors down, I think. Just some photos. Maybe a DNA sample."

DNA sample? What did Hal expect him to do, tackle an experimental, genetically modified creature to the ground and take a buccal smear? Probably. Snake rolled his eyes, and headed for the stairs. It would be an employee working late, or a managers' fish tank. You didn't keep nefarious secrets in an undefended, unhidden public location like this. Why, anybody could just wander in off the street. He pushed open a door and walked into an autopsy room.

He stared hard for a moment but, yes, unmistakably an autopsy room. A white-tiled autopsy room, with a stainless steel autopsy table in the centre. There was a battery of lights above it, but he didn't turn them on, trusting instead to his night vision goggles. As he moved forward, his footsteps splashed. The room had been recently hosed down. He still imagined he could smell blood.

There was a doorway with no door in it at the rear of the room, wide enough for a gurney to be wheeled through with ease, and he entered the second chamber with caution. He expected, and found, rows of steel cages with wire mesh doors. It reminded him of a veterinary surgery, or a pound. All seemed empty, but from one in the far corner came a soft, rhythmic scratching. That must be Otacon's animal. Readying the camera, he went over and knelt down.

And spat a swearword.

"Otacon, it's a girl."

"What?"

"It's a little girl."

She was crouched in the wire cage, naked, and staring blankly into space. The fingers of her left hand moved aimlessly over the metal floor. Snake put his hands on the wire mesh, and she stopped scratching, but didn't look up. He remembered he was invisible, and turned the stealth camouflage off.

"Hey," he whispered. "What's your name?"

No response.

"Can you understand me? Can you hear me?" He reached for the lock. It was simple, designed to hold only animals, and he flipped it open. "Otacon, I'm getting her out."

"Snake, what do you mean, a girl? Do you mean, like -"

"I mean a goddamn girl. Get it together or I'm turning the codec off." The door swung open, and he reached into the little hutch to pull her out. She was biddable to the point of tameness. When he took her arm and tugged, she moved forward, slid out of the cage and stood up. Whatever direction Snake gently pulled her in, she would walk. When he stopped pulling, she would stand still. Her eyes did not even flicker with fear. He thought she must be blind, deaf and retarded, a failed experiment about to be dissected. Her body suggested she must be about fifteen, small and skinny, but post-pubescent. His shock was turning into pity and revulsion, and he thought about how to get her out of the building. "Otacon, I'm giving her the stealth cammo. Help me get past the cameras."

"You got it."

He clipped the webbing belt around her waist, wishing some other part of his gear was detachable so she didn't have to be so naked. He turned it on and she vanished. Blind, deaf, dumb and dense - he'd better not let go of her wrist now. When they reached the first flight of stairs, she stumbled, and rather than try and manoeuvred her down the many steps, he picked her up.

"What did your contact say they were doing here?" he murmured into the codec.

"Cloning," replied Otacon. "And finding ways to make the clones copy more perfectly and live longer. But I thought cattle, racehorses, not... not this."

The pair entered the foyer. Stealth cammo was hardly flawless, but Snake didn't expect to have to tell the motionless girl to stay quiet as they made their way towards the glass doors. It was startling, then, when she sprang from his arms like a cat, kicking against his chest as she leaped away. There was a metallic click - the sound of a silenced weapon firing. He realised the holster containing his tranquilliser pistol was empty just before the guard noisily slumped to the floor.

Right. Not blind, possibly deaf, mad, armed and invisible. "Otacon. I've got a problem."

"What's up, Snake?"

He explained. Suddenly, with a crackle of light, the girl reappeared. "Oh, one less problem. The batteries have run down." She was standing stock still a few metres away from him.

"One less problem?! You mean we've discovered she's a merciless killing machine?"

"Guard's not dead." He gently removed the pistol from her unresisting grip. "Quiet, obedient - she'd make a great pet."

"Snake!"

"Can you bring the car closer? I don't feel like getting caught kidnapping a naked teenager."

* * *

"This is very neat stuff." The man was pale and nerdy. He had glasses, which he had perched on top of his floppy-haired head while he examined the copies of the data Hal had sent him. David suspected his name was Hank. "Did you find anything else?"

"We found a - a live sample."

"No way! You get any DNA?"

"We took the sample. She's a human."

The sample was huddled against the sofa, wearing a massively oversized t-shirt as a kind of dress. On top of the sofa, David sat and chain-smoked angrily, listening to Hal's exchange with possibly-Hank. This whole episode had been nothing more than an aside, a brief jaunt into an office to look at some papers that might prove mutually beneficial. Now, they were stuck with a special-needs mutant.

He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and absently reached over to ruffle her fur-short hair. "I'm not angry with you. It's just one thing after another." He'd expected to find scars on her scalp, but there didn't seem to be any. "I'm tired, Hal's tired. You were supposed to be a dog, not a girl."

In the bedroom, the scientist was still wittering into the web cam about science crap that David couldn't bear to hear any more. Telomeres and free radicals and things he'd heard so many times they were meaningless. He scratched the girl's head.

"Everybody dies, right?" It was easy to ask rhetorical questions of the mute. "Better a battlefield than an autopsy table." Unbidden thoughts of Gray Fox came to him. Nothing wrong with a clean death. He hadn't realised he'd pulled his hand away until the girl suddenly moved against him. "Huh. You like that." He rubbed behind her ear. "Good girl. Who's a good girl?"

"Dave, she's not a dog!" Hal walked into the room, so tired he was weaving from side to side. "The intel is good, but he needs pictures and DNA. We've arranged a rendezvous for tomorrow. You want a coffee?" Without waiting for a reply, he held the kettle under the tap and turned it on. "He thinks he can help you. There's a drug in development that's made rats live three times their usual lifespan in laboratories. You know how they punch holes in mouse ears to identify them? The technicians walked in the next morning to find they'd all healed. Like a miracle." Mugs, instant coffee, sugar, hot water. "But he's going to have to move. When the company goes down, he'll lose most of his funding." He put one of the mugs on the low table in front of David, and glanced at the motionless girl. "Geez, I can't believe we've found a cloned human!"

"We haven't." He reached over and put one finger on the back of her hand. She had no nails, only blunt, pink flesh. When he pressed down, a long, straight claw slid from a slit in her fingertip.

Hal put his hands over his open mouth and stared, wordless and wide-eyed.

"I found claw marks on my suit after she jumped off me," continued David, as if he hadn't noticed the man's reaction. "I don't want you alone with her."

"Oh, God." He knelt down to look at her stubby hands, and her unfocussed eyes. "What is she? Some kind of weapon?"

"Probably," replied the soldier, with just a trace of bitterness. He stood up, tugging the girl to her feet as well. "I'm gonna see if I can get her to use the bathroom. I don't want to be mopping up any puddles."

Hal said "Good idea," and crawled into the kitchen to fix himself another coffee. Then he frowned. "You're very okay with this," he called, accusingly.

"Spend long enough on a battlefield, and you'll find yourself helping someone go to the bathroom." Suddenly, he made a surprised, amused noise. "Heh. She knows how to use the toilet."

"Um, great?" Hal sounded faintly repulsed, and wondered if he should go in and make sure Dave wasn't getting off on this.

"She doesn't know how to sit on a sofa or pick up a cup, but she can go to the bathroom by herself and shoot like a trained assassin. There's something wrong here, Hal."

They ate cereal, the girl eating directly out of a bowl on the floor in one of the most vile acts of abasement either man had ever seen. It was hard to watch, physically disgusting, even; she ate cleanly, but that only added to the sense that she was some kind of animal in a human body. When the meagre meal was finished, she lay down on the carpet.

"We need to find somewhere better for her to stay tomorrow. We're the worlds crappiest excuses for psychiatric nurses," said Dave, as he lay a blanket over her. "She's cute, though. In a psycho sort of way. I wonder if she can learn anything, or if -" He turned to Hal, only to find him fast asleep on the sofa, with his mouth wide open. Carefully, he took the man's glasses off and tucked the quilt from the bedroom around him.

He made himself another cup of coffee and paced around the room to keep himself alert as he watched over his partner.


	2. Chapter 2

Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima. I think he's showing admirable restraint with them.

* * *

Echoes

Hal couldn't say what had woken him up. He fumbled sleepily for his glasses, and stared at the off-white artex of the ceiling for a moment. David was lying on the sofa beside him. The scientist looked up tiredly, expecting to see the girl somewhere nearby.

A movement on the other side of the room caught his eye, and he turned. It was her. She was standing in the bedroom doorway with the early afternoon sun behind her. It made her short hair glow red. There was a gun in her hand, and she was aiming it towards him. His eyes widening, Hal started to push himself to his feet, and he just has time to say, "Don't-" before she fired it.

There was no bang, only the click of the bolt. Pain bit savagely into Hal's shoulder. He screamed, and something smashed into the back of his head, driving him to his knees. Above him, he saw for the first time a stranger dressed in black, before a heavy boot thudded into his abdomen.

As he curled on the floor with his eyes shut, too frightened to move, an exchange of silenced gunshots ricocheted above him. There was no sound at all, save for the metallic clicking and eventually two heavy thuds. As if to compensate, his own heartbeat seemed to echo like hammer blows and the blood roared in his ears as the pain in his shoulder intensified steadily.

"Hal?" That was David's voice, slurred as if he were drunk. Hal opened his eyes and struggled to his knees, clutching his shoulder, the pain and the fear only increased as he saw the legendary soldier weave unsteadily across the room.

"I thought you were on watch!"Yelled Hal. Suddenly, his shoulder hurt to much for him to touch. "Dave, help!"

He rubbed his neck as he knelt beside his partner. "I was on watch. They must have shot me with a tranq needle. You're lucky it slipped out, or you'd have to stitch this yourself," he said, his voice still loud and indistinct. He clumsily but firmly grasped Hal's shirt, ignoring the yelps this provoked in it's owner, and tore it open. Suddenly, the colour drained from his face, and he seemed to sober in an instant. "Alright. Don't panic. I'm going to find a knife."

"What?" Hal glanced down at his arm. There was no wound, but his shoulder was turning black. Glistening patches, like gangrenous burns or fresh tar, were trickling down towards his elbow. He screamed again. "Dave, do something!"

While the recently tranquillised man tried to wrestle his survival knife from his gear with fingers that felt like they belonged to someone else, someone who'd been dead for weeks, the girl crept out from under the coffee table. The gun was still in her hands; she had to climb over the small, prone bodies of the two unconscious intruders, but she made her way to Hal's side and bit down on his arm.

The pain was excruciating. Hal fainted. David rushed over, about to pull her away – and then hesitated. Tranquilliser needles didn't just slip out, and it wasn't like he had a better idea, short of a hasty amputation. Instead he stopped, reached down, and took hold of the black ski mask that covered the face of one of the felled interlopers. Cautiously, he peeled it back.

He'd expected it, but it was still startling. It didn't just look like the girl, it was her. Dark eyes, dull with drugs, stared at him with the patient intelligence of a wolverine in a trap, just waiting for a more opportune moment to attack again. These things didn't know the meaning of the word defeated. Literally. Looping cable ties around their wrists and ankles before they regained enough conciousness to quietly kill everyone in the room, he frisked them briefly. They had no weapons; but their fingertips bore no nails. He didn't have to get close enough to touch their hands to know they held long, poisoned claws.

Hal was crying softly into the carpet, and his arm still looked like it had been dipped in hot tar, but the blisters of dead skin seemed to have stopped spreading. As David sank to his knees and pulled the man onto his lap, the shiny blackness cracked like a burned crust, and once he'd fought down the urge to puke he could see skin – red, bleeding skin, but not wet, sliding muscle or yellow bone – underneath. The girl was licking blood off Hal's arm, then pushing her claws into him. Her eyes were still blank and expressionless. He wondered if she knew what she was doing, or if she was just mindlessly following an instinct.

"David?" The man's voice was hoarse and weak, but the skinny engineer was awake.

"Everything's fine." An automatic lie, but it might be true. "Looks like I won't have to chop your arm off after all."

"I'm gonna be sick."

"Hold on." He picked Hal up, the movement making the injured man shriek as the black crust flaked off, and carried him into the bathroom, putting him down as carefully as he could on the linoleum. "We have to get out of here. I'm going to get our gear packed up. You'll be alright here until I get back." It was an absolute assurance. The girl had followed them, and knelt to resume blood-swallowing. David wanted to grab her and demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing, but he had to trust her. Trust the blood-drinking mutant freak, he told himself as he ran to gather the many, various and heavy tools of their trade scattered over the apartment. He heard Hal cry out with pain, presumably as she gave him another dose of anti-venom. Trust the psycho lab-grown clawed monster chick. Kicking the would-be assassins lying on the living room floor might have alleviated some of his frustrations, but fuck it all, they probably didn't know what they were doing any more than she did.

So he just shut down and gathered up all the computers Hal had set up in the bedroom, disassembled and packed away all the weapons he'd deemed necessary and not been able to defend himself or his partner with. Loading himself up like a contestant for World's Strongest Man, he'd taken it all down to the car in a single trip. It was a really nice day outside. The sun was bright and the air was fresh. Birds were tweeting. When he ran up the stairs and back into the apartment to the sound of Hal throwing up, he realised how much he couldn't wait to get back on the road.

The girl was sitting in the bathroom doorway, licking her claws like a cat. David stepped over her to kneel behind the shaking, sweating man. He reached for the first aid kit they'd stowed next to the sink, rummaged through it until he found a pair of small, silver scissors, and started to cut Hal's shirt off. "Looks like she's finished. Can you move your fingers?"

"It-it makes sense," Hal managed to stutter from between chattering teeth. "These are some powerful t-t-toxins. I c-can't think of anything else that could tu-turn a man into a mummified corpse in m-minutes." He suddenly tensed and retched into the toilet, but after a few moments of deep breathing, he seemed to calm down. "The researchers would want plenty of antidote nearby. She can analyse your body chemistry, manufacture the correct cocktail, and deliver it exactly where it's needed. It's a neat idea."

David snorted as he pulled the tatters of Hal's shirt off him. "You come up with that while she was drinking your blood?" There were rows of angry red pinpricks all over his torso. Antidote was one thing, surgical tools cleaned with saliva were another. He poured alcohol over a piece of gauze. "You're probably right. It'd explain why I found her in the autopsy room. A specimen gets big ideas in their last few moments, you'd want her nearby. This'll sting." What an understatement. The gauze brushed away black flakes as he dragged it over the raw wound, like scraping the burnt bits off toast. Hal shrank down within himself and moaned softly, but didn't struggle. "Christ, you're a mess."

The man didn't respond. Pain and nausea were occupying his full attention right now. That, and a strong wish to die in peace. Instead, he was due for an eighteen-hour road trip, possibly interspersed with death and amateur amputation. He tried to move his fingers, and with a great effort managed to get them to twitch. Were his hacking days over? Not to mention his MMORPG's, there was no way he'd be able to play them one-handed. Suddenly, a cold flannel between his shoulder blades interrupted his dwelling upon the unending misery his life was surely about to become. David reached around and pressed it to his forehead for a moment, brushing aside the strands of blonde hair stuck to his brow with sweat "That's nice," Hal murmured, his thoughts abruptly diverted from suicide. David slowly moved the wet cloth up over the back of Hal's neck, leaving a trail of sweet coolness on his fevered skin, and the man shivered with relief. "Aaah... That's really nice." He leaned back into his muscular partner's hands, feeling well enough to make a weak quip. "I thought you said you weren't going to leave me alone with her?"

"You might be better off with her. I didn't even hear the shot that put me down." He didn't sound like he was joking. In fact, Hal might have guessed there was more than a note of remorse to his voice.

"It's not your fault," he said. "Anyway, it was me who told you to find her. Were you really going to cut my arm off?"

"Sure. I need to give you some survival training. If someone gets bitten by a snake with neurotoxic venom, and there's no antidote nearby, get that limb off." This time he didn't sound like he was joking, and there was more than a note of positive enthusiasm to his voice.

"But that's snake bites, not clone scratches. What if you'd cut my arm off and I'd still died?"

"Eh, you've got to try." He soaked the flannel under the cold tap, and put it in Hal's left hand. "You flannel, I'll bandage."

* * *

"Why do I have to go in the back?"

"Because. The seat belt'll rub your arm. Tell me where I'm supposed to be going."

Hal reeled off directions to the diner where he and Hank had agreed to meet. "Are you sure it's not just because you're worried I'll throw up again?"

"It is for general reasons of your comfort. This heap of junk's on its' last legs, anyway. We'll be lucky if it gets us halfway home."

"You're so territorial." He stared out of the window at the trees and houses, trying to remember the last time he'd been on a car journey like this, not hunched over the steering wheel worrying about David or balancing three computers on the dashboard and trying to correlate their readouts, but dozing in the back seat with pillows and blankets. Worrying was a hard habit to break, though. "You must be tired. Just stick it in third gear and I'll take over."

"You concentrate on regrowing your arm, before I have to find myself another nerd."

The girl was sitting in the passenger seat beside David, dressed in Hal's clothes. She looked like a young mental patient, kidnapped in order to be sexually exploited by two opportunistic vagrants. He hoped no-one called the police, since they had no way of proving that wasn't the case. "Do you think Hank will take her?"

David shrugged. "I guess so." He fumbled in the glove box for a pack of cigarettes, lifted it to his mouth and pulled one out. That signalled the conversation was over for the next few minutes, and the companionable silence lingered. Hal found himself lulled by the motion of the car, and was surprised when he felt it pulling to a halt, the tyres crunching over gravel.

"I'm going to go find him," announced David, opening his door. "We're too damn memorable like this. You hungry?"

"Who, me?" Hal asked, sleepily.

"No, all the other sentient beings in here. What do you want to eat?"

"Um." His stomach rebelled at the thought of food. "Something not greasy."

Hank the Rogue Geneticist wasn't in the diner. David looked out of the window while he ordered at the counter, hoping he could catch the man before he got out of his car – it would look a lot less suspicious. It was a tacky little place, and while the mercenary wasn't fussy about the manner in which his food arrived – silver service, cardboard carton, four feet – he wasn't sorry they'd be eating outside in the sunshine.

It'd distract him from the burning rage he felt every time he looked at Hal's pale, pain-lined face. Snake walked into war zones. He was shot and stabbed and electrocuted and blown up, and that was alright, that was what he'd been made for. Otacon stayed behind, doing the thinking. He wasn't supposed to be the one who got hurt. When they'd first met four months ago, David had thought that the skinny geek could do with good shake-up, although in his defence that had been something of a stressful time all round. But he soon realised Hal's realm was that of the intellectual, not the physical; even if someone punched him every time he showed them his stupid little plastic robot toys, he probably still wouldn't put two and two together. Perhaps it was a requirement of a good scientist. If you got put off the first time something exploded in your face, you'd never get around to making it explode in someone else's.

Not that that had ever been Hal's intention.

The waitress put the plastic packets of sandwiches and chips and cookies in a paper bag, and slotted the cups of coffee into a cardboard holder. David handed over dollar bills, dusted with an innocuous white powder that prevented the transfer of fingerprints or traces of DNA, and broke down to housedust in an hour.

He said he'd got the idea from parrots. Parrots, said David. Yes, parrots, replied Hal, the ends of some of their feathers dissolve into fine particles as they groom themselves. It helps repel parasites.

He'd said a lot more than that, more than David had ever wanted to know about any avian, but not why he was thinking of parrots in the first place.

A slow trickle of cars filtered into the parking lot from the road. He scanned the licence plates as they drove past, and here came the ones he'd been told to watch for. He slowly walked towards the car, letting the driver see him, then turned and made his way back to his own.

The girl was where he'd left her, but Hal had shuffled across and opened the door, and was sitting in the sunshine. He was clutching his bandaged right arm, but seemed bright enough. "Is that him?"

"Yeah." He wondered if he could go and find a quiet place to have a smoke while the two scientists exchanged their indecipherable chatter, but decided he'd rather stay and guard Hal. Especially if anyone was going to get any clever ideas about poking around with the girl. She might be a tame mutant, she might be the good side to their evil coin, but some risks it was just plain stupid to take.

Hank pulled up and opened his car door. The first thing he said was, "Oh, wow." The second was, "Are you guys okay? It smells like a leather factory over here."

"We've got two samples for you," deadpanned David, putting a cigarette in his mouth. "They're on the floor of our old base. They're exactly like this one, except they broke in and tried to kill both of us."

"Watch out for their hands," added Hal. "They've got retractable claws instead of fingernails, and if they touch you, you'll die unless you've got this one with you. And we need her."

"Awesome." He didn't look like he'd heard. Instead, he turned and stuck his head back into the car. "Do we have facilities for two humans?"

"We can probably make room." The voice was deep and rumbling, and followed by the sound of a door opening. A hulking man-mountain stepped out. "They put a fight, you say?" The man was a good deal taller than Dave, and almost as powerfully built. He folded his arms on the roof of the car, and put his chin on them. "Will a tranquilliser rifle work?"

"Depends. You could try hitting them with it." Feeling both irritated and relieved that Hank had showed up with unannounced but less dumb backup, David leaned back against the warm side of the car and put a cigarette in his mouth. "This one's pretty docile," he said, indicating the silent girl beside him, "But the others are deceptive. Don't let your guard down. They're still and quiet until they see a chance to strike, they move like cats, and if they break your skin you'll die horribly."

"This is _just_ what we've been looking for," said Hank. He turned back to the car and fumbled with something in the front seat for a few moments. When he looked up again, he was wearing latex gloves and tearing open a sterile packet. "Can I get a cheek swab from her? It won't hurt or anything."

She didn't look at him. She just put her hands over her face and pulled her legs up onto the seat.

"I think she's scared," said Hal, redundantly. Awkwardly, he slid out of the car and leaned over the open door, his legs still feeling weak and numb. The girl didn't move when he reached down and stroked her head.

"You trying to get your other arm torn off?"

"You were stroking her head, and she liked it." She wasn't responding now, though. Hal glanced over at where the pair of geneticists were watching him curiously. "Sorry. Snake found her in a cage in a laboratory. I think I need a stronger word than 'traumatised' to describe her."

The huge man had taken out a digital camera. "You guys wanna step back? Unless you feel like making this a Kodak moment." Once the members of Philanthropy had beat a hasty retreat, he began to take photographs of the girl. At least with her hands covering her face it was easy to get good shots of her short, blunt fingers. While his partner snapped away, Hank sat wandered around with his hands in his pockets, complaining loudly about how it would only take a second and if the other two hadn't shown up she'd be the only sample they had, traumatised or not.

Dave hadn't come out here to listen to some scientist bitching. He grabbed the swab from Hank's car, then went over and pushed the girls' hands away. "Okay," he said calmly, taking her jaw in his hand. "We're going to open our mouth. Yes? Aah. Good, that's a good girl." He kept talking to her in a low, gentle murmur as he dragged the cotton bud over the inside of her cheek, hopefully picking up some of the large, loose skin cells most animals had there.

"Nice one." Hank had the plastic envelope held out ready to receive the precious genetic material, and stored it carefully in the glove box of his car. Steam leaked out as he did so; Hal hoped he hadn't really rigged up a cryogenic freezing unit in the dashboard, and if he had, he hoped they wouldn't crash into anything as they drove. "She's fucked up, isn't she? If this doesn't bring the place down, nothing will.

"And the drugs you're working on?" Hal might have been leaning heavily on Dave for support and fighting the urge to pass out on the floor, but he was still determined to talk shop. "Are you any closer to human trials?"

"We've been getting some mad results from the mice," he replied, starting to pack his DNA-collecting kit away. "But we don't have a cloned monkey, let alone a human. If these things are what we think they are, someone else could have beat us to the push, and bang goes our patent."

"On the other hand," continued the bigger man, "Even if we have to keep it under the radar, a life-extending drug is going to have plenty of buyers. If we can make it, we'll hook you up." He shook his head as he tucked the camera back into a pouch on his belt – clearly, it was a treasured research tool. "Still don't believe you're a fucking clone, man. Wanna give us a DNA sample, eh? Expand our pool of resources?"

"Go to hell," replied David, amiably. "You've got two freaks full of all the blood and spit you could ever want tied up in an apartment just down the road." He fumbled in his pocket for the keys to their old base, and tossed them to the muscular one, who seemed more likely to catch them. "Hey. Are you a scientist or what?"

"What else would I want with yo' freaks, man?"

"Just wondering."

They said their farewells and drove away. Hal watched them leave with a look of extreme trepidation on his face. "Do you think they'll be alright? Did we warn them enough?"

Dave shrugged. "I'd be surprised if they hadn't both gotten free and were coming after us right now. If they're still there, they're dumber then I gave them credit for." He picked up the paper bags of food and the coffee holder. "Can you walk? My hands are full." Tugging the girl to her feet, he lead them towards the grassy field that ran alongside the diner car park and the road.

"If they're coming after us, is this really the right time for a picnic?"

"Sure, it's the last thing they'll expect." Even if the cloned mutants were running after them with all the speed their gimpy shanks could muster, Dave would still have been startled if they could cover the twenty miles the trio had driven in less than a day. "Huh. You think they can drive?"

Hal glanced nervously at the small girl in baggy clothes as she was gently pushed to the ground. "It depends whether she's the exception or the rule, doesn't it?" Gratefully, he accepted the cardboard cup of steaming coffee from his partner, wincing as he had to flex his arm to shift position. "Oww! I don't know how you do the fighting stuff, Dave. I don't like this getting-hurtness at all."

"Heh. Nor do I." He glanced up from under his long fringe – the trademark bandanna was packed away when he was dressed as a civilian – and gave Hal a rare and genuine smile. "You're doing pretty good, for a computer geek."

He found himself unconsciously smiling back, and suddenly felt shy and stupid in a way he knew he should have gotten over by now. Staring down into his sandwich to hide even the remotest possibility that he was blushing, Hal wished he was back home in front of four or five computers. Furtively, he glanced over at Dave. Still talking to her in that singsong murmuring, was opening up the girls' sandwich and lying it down on a napkin so she could eat it. He'd never seen the man act so tenderly before. The way he'd held her chin, in one hand that was strong enough to crush bone but gentle enough to calm a frightened child.

Now he knew he was blushing. Hal scowled at the innocent lettuce and tomato before him, trying to pull his mind back to more pressing matters. What did he think he was doing, composing gushy fanfiction about the legendary mercenary? He bit into his lunch savagely, and was in a bad mood for about ten minutes until Dave took his good hand to help him to his feet.

Gushy fanfiction it was, then.


	3. Chapter 3

Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima, but we'll always have plushies.

* * *

Echoes

They retreated to Alaska, as they always did when they felt particularly hunted. The population there was so sparse, isolated and well-defended that it was possible for the two men to live in peace for weeks at a time, even to make acquaintances. Snake still had his dogs, against all logic. He certainly wasn't likely to be entering any races again. Even if he did, they no longer trained together enough to win. They were a good team, strong, obedient, sociable enough be house dogs, even with children around – he ought to have sold them. Rasmuson, the man who looked after them for him would have paid enough. He would take no money from Snake for doing so, saying that the animals saved him enough in snowmobile fuel to pay for themselves.

"Let me know if you ever change your mind," he said, patting and stroking their heads in farewell as their master hitched them to the sled. "I think the tan bitch is pregnant again. You ought to get her fixed, the little whore." He scrunched her ears, lovingly.

"I'll send you a pup," said Snake. "You should train up your own team. You've got enough of a way with them."

"Anyone with the key to the food bins has a way with them, my friend."

* * *

It was twilight when he arrived back at the tavern, but it was going to be twilight for the next few weeks. He left the dogs on the pavement outside – not an uncommon sight in that part of town - and went up to the room he'd hired. Hal didn't hear him come in, as he was sitting on the bed, typing on his laptop with his left hand and listening to tinny J-pop. With his soldier's mind, David was now filling him under 'walking wounded', not hurt enough to worry about but too weak to carry a full pack. He went up behind the man and tapped him on the left shoulder as he carried on walking right. 

Hal glanced over his left shoulder. When he saw no one there, he pulled the headphone out of his ear and gave a long-suffering sigh. "Doesn't that ever get old?"

"Not for me. I got the dogs." It was a trivial way to sum up a thirty-mile, four-hour round trip across the frozen wastes. "Where's the girl?"

"She's been asleep on the window seat for hours." He nodded towards the bay window. She looked like a heap of clothes that had been hastily thrown onto the cushions. "Let's go home. There's no internet here."

"So what are you working on? Anything I can read?" Dave smirked as he saw Hal redden guiltily and hit the power switch. "Let me see your arm," he said, rummaging through their bags for the first aid kit. "Then we can set off. You can ride the sled and we'll see if our mutant is made out of the same stuff as her friends."

"I don't want to ride the sled!" Cried the skinny nerd, dismayed. He loved the dogs, but was classicly awful at any sort of outdoor sport. "I'll fall off and die!"

"Christ, Hal, we're not going racing. You're breathing luggage." Carefully, he began to snip through the gauze strips, rather than try and get the man to raise his arm so he could unwind them. "Scream if it hurts," he said, peeling away the bandages. Hal's shoulder and upper arm were hot, red, swollen, and painful to move, but as David examined the wound, he was satisfied that nobody's arm was going to suddenly drop off, or start sprouting feathers or claws or anything. "Huh. Everything looks good. Guess I'll wrap you up and we'll get going."

"You sound almost disappointed."

"Disappointed? I'm fucking amazed. Sixteen hours ago you were crispy meat." Even the red puffiness was a good sign, a sign of Hal's lymphatic system working overtime to filter the poison from his body. It didn't need a bandage, but Dave didn't think he could live with the little breathy whimpers his wussy nerd of a partner made every time something touched his arm. And having a bandage would make him feel special. Everyone knew how conducive to healing that was. As he sat behind Hal on the bed, working away with fresh gauze, his eyes wandered over to the abandoned, incrimination laptop. "What were you writing, anyway? You're not working on selling me out, are you?"

"It's just a story. Y'know, about anime and stuff. Just the boring geeky things that I like, right?"

What a magnificent way to throw someone off the scent. Now David wasn't at all interested in probing more deeply to see what Hal was up to. God help Philanthropy if this man ever fell into enemy hands. "Can I read it?"

"Why?! You hate anime! It's really boring! You wouldn't like it!" Hal tried to turn without hurting his shoulder. "You're grinning! Why are you grinning?"

"Because you're a geek." Dave knew what the story was about, anyway. Two cartoon characters with big eyes having anal sex, and despite neither character having any experience in such matters, it would all be as romantic as a princesses' wedding. There would be angst about the nature of humanity, and probably giant robots. It was a lot more fun to have Hal thinking he had no idea, though. "Get your outdoor gear on, we've got to get going."

Their exchange had apparently woken the girl, because she was sitting up and looking at the dim, white landscape outside of the small window. David layered more clothes onto her; he had no idea about the weird magical properties of hideous mutants, but something raised in a lab was going to find Alaska very cold. He'd been able to borrow an old pair of boots from Rasmuson, and had to put five pairs of socks on her slim feet before they'd fit. It was a worry to him. She couldn't tell him if the boots rubbed, and might not even limp if she got blisters. There was nothing to be done, though; Hal would have problems with the twenty five mile hike at the best of times, and although the wounded man was much recovered, he was still weak and feverish. The whining would become unbearable. Still, they could swap places for a while if it came to it. He got the girl to raise her arms and tugged a couple more jumpers over her head.

"Can you give me a hand?" Came Hal's sheepish, muffled voice. David glanced up to see his partner, the man with whom he trusted his life on a daily basis, lying on his side tangled in a pullover.

Feeling like a mother just before the school bus arrived, the soldier got them both ready. He divided up the luggage amongst them, although Hal was almost fully laden down with his laptop under his arm and the girl could only be given what could be draped around her neck. As he paid for the room, the landlady tried to make conversation, but he managed to get away with no more than a few lines of small talk before he dashed after the other two.

They were already outside, standing beside the sled. The girl was looking at the dogs, and they were standing up to look at her. She raised her ungloved hand to an animal's nose, and David had a sudden, clear vision of a yelp and a whimper, fur flaking off in patches, and a dead dog. "No-!" he yelled, darting forward.

The dog licked her fingers. She put her hand in its mouth, then onto its back, then leaned forward and licked its nose. The other dogs got involved. She knelt down and pushed her face into their warm flanks. Soon, the girl was lost in a writhing, wagging mass of fur.

"Wow, that's cute," said Hal. "See? She must be a good person if she likes dogs, right?"

Unable to breathe, David stood with every muscle in his body tensed. If he ran forward and grabbed her, she might poison his huskies. If he stood still and waited, she might poison his huskies. He reached for the revolver at his hip, but even that might not drop her fast enough, and shooting a young girl dead in the middle of the main street might attract unwanted attention.

Hal wandered over and put his load in the middle of the sled. The dogs greeted him enthusiastically, and he pulled his gloves off to pat and stroke them, calling them by the names he'd given them. The girl pulled their tails and tried to hold their paws, and they milled around her in happy tolerance. Slowly, it dawned on David that nobody was going to kill his dogs, and it was probably only the well-trained and tame nature of the animals that had prevented the girl from becoming dog food. Huskies were not generally regarded as pets, but his had never killed so much as a cat. He whistled for their attention, and went to load up the sled, his heart still racing.

* * *

"If I got off, we'd get home faster!" 

"If you were walking, we wouldn't be home by this time tomorrow."

"But I must be really heavy for them!"

"If they can manage me, they can manage you."

"My nose is cold!"

"We're in Alaska, Hal. Pull your hood up."

A broad, snow-white track ran through a dense, dark green pine forest. Bear and caribou and wolves roamed through the trees. Lemmings and voles scurried in tunnels under the snow. Hawks and owls waited in the branches for them to betray their existence and provide a meal for their chicks. Small brown birds who lived on pine kernels hid in the forest, watching the sled go by and uttering high, short alarm calls. Most of the teeming wildlife around them was invisible to the two men, and ignored by the girl and the dogs. She was trotting alongside them, either following or copying their behaviour. Hal watched her heavily muffled figure and bright red hat bobbing across the unendingly white road before him. "How come she's playing with them, but won't even look at us?"

"I don't know." Privately, David felt this proved that she was a grotesquely deformed animal. He kept thinking of the way Hal screamed when she stuck her germ-ridden claws into him, and the horrible moment when he thought she'd kill the dogs. It was his job to be the pessimist. Hal was altogether too trusting.

Moments passed, with the only sound the swish of runners on ice, and the happy panting of the dogs. This was what the mercenary always found himself longing for, endless solitude and empty wastes. It couldn't last. On the sled, Hal fidgeted.

"Do you want to sing a song?"

"What kind of song?"

Hal took a deep breath, hesitated for a moment, then launched into the theme song from Dragonhalf. David, who could speak Japanese, winced as he caught a mangled something about not liking tomatoes. The nonsensical words were whipped away by the wind, but even so, the concluding bars seemed to echo around the empty landscape. The man beamed at him through his steamed-up glasses and fur-trimmed hood. "Okay, now you join in!"

"Nah, but you should sing it again. I think you're making the dogs run faster."

* * *

They reached David's secluded house, lit the fires and got the generators working. The dogs were fed and watered. Hal reconnected all his computers in the study he'd appropriated as his own. David told Hal not to flush the toilet, took a wrench out to the shed, and tried to get water running from the well to the plumbing again. Self-sufficiency was not an easy option, but with two of them watching and one of them doing most of the work, the house was habitable again in record time. 

Dave fell asleep on the sofa in front of the fire. He woke up six hours later to pull his boots off, go upstairs, and fall asleep in bed. For the next few days, nothing happened. Hal fed the dogs and played with them, in between long spells spent at his computers. The girl alternated her time between lying on the hearth rug and chasing around with the huskies. David slept and went for long walks, once returning dragging the freshly-shot body of a full grown but young and tender deer behind him. His sled team got the offal and the juicy bones, but he and Hal had the meat, roast.

Snow fell. They had to lock the door to stop the girl from trying to go out. She sat on the windowsill and watched the white flakes drift down, like a cat watching birds. Hal was sitting on the sofa with his back against the arm rest and his laptop balanced on his legs. His feet were in David's lap, and the man was resting the French novel he was reading on them. Every now and again the fire would crackle, or the girl would tap the windowpane, or a dog would yawn, and Hal's fingers on the keys provided a constant background of soft clicking.

The silence was a palpable presence in the room, as thick and furry as the blanket of snow that was falling outside. Time passed, unmarked by anything except the slow burning down of the logs in the fireplace. David finished his book, then ran the tip of his finger down the sole of Hal's foot. He waited for the squealing to subside, then asked, "Can I read it now?"

"You hate my fanfiction!" Hal paused and went red. "I mean...read what?"

"The gay porn you're writing."

He slammed the laptop shut. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't write gay porn. I hate gay porn."

"I'm not judging you."

"Stop it!"

David grinned, and got up to get another book. As he passed the door frame, he grabbed the lintel and did a few chin-ups. "If you didn't react, I wouldn't tease you. You know that, right?"

Hal narrowed his eyes. "Are you sure it's not just because you're mean?"

"Sure, that's part of it, but if you weren't so easy to wind up I'd spend more time terrorising woodland creatures." He casually did fifty pull ups before he began to feel it, then slowed down to do a hundred more. "Hey. If you can do ten press-ups, I'll never tease you again."

"Do they have to be consecutive?"

"Yeah, but I'll let you do them girl-style."

It was a tempting offer. "What if I do them next week? My arm's still not right."

"What?" Dave dropped to the floor, stormed over and grabbed Hal's arm. "Take your shirt off and show me."

"Nothing's wrong with it!" He tried to wriggle away from the larger, stronger man without losing his grip on the laptop. "I just wouldn't want to put all my weight on it, or anything."

"What about your fingers?" Demanded David, manipulating his partner's shoulder. "Goddamit, Hal, my life depends on your typing. You can't hide injuries from me like this."

"I'm not hiding it. I just don't feel the need to walk around shirtless." Or trouserless. Hal had developed bat-like hearing in order to detect whether David was dressed or not as he wandered around their shared accommodation. He winced as the man squeezed his arm, but not in pain. "Cut it out, David! You're being weird!"

"I'm not being weird, I'm being cautious. A poisoned mutant stabbed you, I think a little caution is merited." Suddenly, his brows knitted. "When did you decide to grow a beard?"

His stubble being almost as pale as his skin, Hal had managed to become seriously hirsute before anyone noticed. While five-o-clock shadow was usual on anyone who spent up to thirty hours at a time on the internet, the programmer was indeed developing something of a beard. "Well, look who's talking!" He snapped. "When did you last shave?"

"Yeah, but on me, it looks good ," said Dave, running a hand over his chin. "Don't tell me you can't use a razor?"

"It's a co-ordination thing," said Hal, sheepishly. "My hand gets kinda shaky sometimes. I'm scared I'll cut my nose off."

"Huh. Well, that I can help you with." He let go of their arm, and started towards the stairs. "Come on."

On the sofa, Hal blinked. "Wait. What are you offering me, exactly?"

"Get up here! This is a team-building exercise."

Who was making excuses now? Still, Hal climbed slowly after David and followed him into the bathroom. "Um, I probably would be okay to do it myself, but you know how when it gets to a certain length you've got to really hack to get it off, and that sort of small, hard movement seems to be the kind of thing that sets my hand shaking."

"Take your shirt off."

Hal did as he was told. "Probably there are some weak spots in the muscle tissue where they clawed me, we could maybe try and get some nannomachines if it doesn't heal by itself, but you always seem to be okay after getting blown to bits on every mission, so maybe I should just do more exercise."

"What're you so nervous about?" David asked as he ran hot water into the sink and picked up the soap.

"Um." Maybe it was a team building exercise. "You with a razor near my face?"

"Nah, that's not it. I'm not holding anything sharp, and you're still flinching." Lazily, he reached out to rub soap into Hal's stubble. "Or are you embarrassed?"

"Well, this is a pretty stupid predicament to get myself into, wouldn't you say?" He could feel his skin burning where David touched it, his hard, callused hands stroking his cheeks and chin. It was almost like when he'd held the girl's head still in the car. Hal felt vulnerable and trapped. Fear kept him from moving closer, but need kept him from pulling away. David was an intoxicating mixture of gentleness and violence, and it was fine as long as Hal didn't have to think about it, as long as he kept his head down and worked on his computers, because there could be nothing more stupid then giving into this infatuation, this crush he had on a strong and handsome man, because there was a job that needed doing and only they could do it and nothing else mattered.

Nobody born and raised to be a living weapon should be able to show such tenderness.

He kept his eyes closed as the razor slid over his skin. At least he had an excuse to stand still now. He tried not to think, and was grateful for the bagginess of his clothes. God alone knew what Dave would do if he saw the effect this was having on him. Probably learn how to use a computer just so he could rig Hal's homepage to be permanently stuck on a shaving porn website.

"There." The man's voice was a rumble in his ear. "Rinse your face."

Hal leaned over the sink and washed away the remaining traces of soap. It wasn't as close a shave as he'd have given himself, but then he wasn't as badly cut, so it worked out. "Um..."

"What?"

He stood up and turned around. The man was watching him with dark intensity. Instinctively, Hal made a grab for his shirt, but David reached out and took his wrist. Hal tried to pull away, but the mercenary stepped forward and span him around so his back was pressed against the man's broad chest. Before the engineer could work out whether to shout 'Yes!' or 'Help!', he realised that David was examining his outstretched arm, scrutinising the rows of dimpled scar tissue that were now scattered over his shoulder.

"Looks fine. You need to work up the muscle."

Well, you could say that about any place on Hal's body. Oh God, now he was pressed right up against him, could feel the warmth of his body, the hardness of the muscles behind him. The powerful man's coarse, dark stubble tickled the back of Hal's neck. He'd just been _grabbed_. "You could have warned me," he managed to say, trying to sound annoyed and only managing to sound breathless.

"Then you'd have complained." David raised and stretched Hal's arm, as if examining a birds' broken wing. His other hand held the man around the middle, sliding across his waist to keep him still. At length, he was satisfied and released them. "Looks OK to me. You want a coffee?"

Hal nodded, and waited until he heard David's footsteps on the stairs before slowly reaching for his discarded shirt. The places he'd been touched seemed warm and tingly, and, well, there was other warm tingling going on, too. He shamefacedly arranged himself, then scurried after him.

It was hard to get good coffee in Alaska, but both soldier and programmer were members of professions accustomed to drinking bitter, greasy, black sludge and being grateful for it. At least the big, metal drums meant they could have a year's supply squirrelled away in the still, unheated air of the attic. They'd been bought from a government surplus store, and had "desert storm" stamped on the side. Hal had a secret dream that one day both of them would retire and be able to drink real coffee with real milk in it. Having it black was better than adding the white powder claiming to be dried milk.

He took his mug and wandered into the living room. The fire had almost gone out, and it was getting chilly. With a practised hand, he pushed more logs onto the embers and blew on them until a flickering tongue of flame caught the dry wood. When he looked up, he almost spilled his coffee. The girl was kneeling beside him, looking into the fire.

"Was it getting too cold on the window sill?" Hal got up and went over to where she had been sitting. It was still snowing, and there might be drifts four feet deep by the morning. He reached to draw the curtains, when perspective shifted and he saw the misted condensation on the glass. "Oh wow, David! Come and look at this! She's been drawing on the window. It almost looks like letters. 'Chet.'"

"No." David was behind him, staring hard at the glass. "You say it 'snjeg'. It means snow."


	4. Chapter 4

Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima, but they run off and kiss each other when he's not looking.

* * *

Echoes

"But how could she know Russian?"

"The hell if I know." David was still looking at the Cyrillic on the window. They had been drawn with a finger, and not long ago. Her earlier meaningless squiggles were already misting over. The letters could have been taken for a random collection of shapes she'd seen, if it hadn't been for the meaning of the word. Snow. Still... "It could be a coincidence."

"So ask her something," said Hal. "Ask her what her name is in Russian."

"No point."

"What? We're on the verge of making a breakthrough in communications! You can't just say there's no point in trying it out." His eyes narrowed. "Can you even speak Russian?"

"Moje skorostnoje sudno poino ugrjej,"(1) retorted David. "But it won't do any good. Have you ever heard her make the slightest sound? Not just speaking, anything? A shout? A gasp? Anything?"

"Well..."

"And neither have I. She doesn't have any vocal cords, and-" he put two fingers between his lips and whistled so loudly that Hal jumped. The girl by the fire didn't twitch. "She's stone deaf."

That doesn't prove anything." Hal stamped on the floor as hard as he could. She lay down on the rug and rolled over to look at him. "See?"

"She felt the vibrations through the floor. Go out into the next room and scream your head off. I guarantee she won't react." Hal walked towards the kitchen, but the girl got up and followed him, presumably hoping for food. As soon as both of them were through the doorway Dave gave a blood-curdling yell. "Anything?"

"Oh, wow! She's just looking at me. You might be right!" He went to the fridge and poured her a bowl of juice. They'd got her to drink from things that were tabletop-level, but not to pick up a cup. If you gave her a mug, she'd look at it for a moment, then try and lick what she could out the top. Hal couldn't face the pathetic spectacle, or the juice all over the floor, so he let her drink from of a cereal bowl, despite nagging worries that he was reinforcing her negative behaviours. "But why would you make a genetically modified weapon deaf? Unless it makes her be more aware of her environment, or -"

"She's not a weapon. She's the antidote factory, and doesn't need to hear." Two quick jabs with a metal probe, and you'd removed a whole level of stimulus that could spook her. He didn't say that to Hal, though. Leaning against the door frame, he watched her thoughtfully. "But she can write."

"I don't think she really understands the whole tool-using thing, though. Do we have any wax crayons, or chalk?"

"There's some chalk in my toolbag." Suddenly, a thought struck David. "I've got a better idea. Find some spare dishes, or saucers or something," he said, sidling towards the front door. "Distract her, would you? I need to get outside."

"No problemo." Hal took a chocolate biscuit from the heavy jar on the kitchen worktop, then turned back to the girl and held it above his head. "Look! What's this? Is it like a cookie? Would you like a cookie?" The girl had suddenly focussed all her attention on the biscuit, and although she turned around when Dave shut the front door, it was too late. She looked at Hal, who slid the treat onto the table in front her. "I'm sorry! It's cold out there. You'd freeze!"

The girl ate the biscuit, and seemed to forget that David had just gone out, because she seemed surprised when the door opened again, and wasn't quite fast enough to leap over the table and escape. Silver paint cans rolled over the tiles, and a rolled-up A2 flip chart pad sprang open. David lead her back to the chair she'd knocked over, and set it upright again. "Hal, dishes?"

There was a stack of foil pie dishes in the cupboard under the sink. Since neither man made good pastry, Hal decided they could be pressed into service. "How many do you need?"

"Well, I've got five colours."

He stood up. David was pulling out sheets of paper, and laying them in front of the girl. "Fingerpainting?" Asked Hal, putting out five foil trays.

Levering the lids of the cans off with a screwdriver, David asked, "You got any better ideas?"

"No, I think it's good!"

Since the paint was household emulsion, there had been a limited selection of colours in the shed. There'd been cream, beige, magnolia and off-white. Luckily, he was a pack rat, and he'd also found the black he used for windowsills, yellow and red that he painted in stripes on anything that needed to be visible outside, and tester pots of pale green and blue he'd tried out when first decorating the place, before deciding it was cold enough without blue bedroom walls. He poured a little of each into the dishes, and put them up on the table.

The girl looked at him.

"OK. I'll go first." He dipped his index finger in the black paint, then started drawing.

"What are you writing?" Hal couldn't help pronouncing them like Roman letters, and just making clicking, guttural noises when there was a letter with no known equivalent. "Wow, it's like Klingon." David glared at him.

"I wrote, 'What is your name'. I don't think she's getting this at all, though." The girl was looking at him with neither confusion nor comprehension in her eyes.

"Try something simpler," offered Hal. "Just words. In fact, try writing what she wrote. Then she might understand what you're doing."

With his fingertip, David traced out 'snow', then 'house', 'dog', 'fire', 'girl', 'ice', 'tree', anything that he could think of that she might have seen. She reacted no more to the words than she did to anything they said. "Dammit, this isn't working."

Hal took the girls' hand, then put her finger in the blue paint and dragged it across the paper. He drew a green line beside her blue one, then made it part of a box with a triangle on top. The box got smaller rectangles in it, and the triangle got a short, straight line with a long wiggly line coming out of it. "Now write 'house' next to that."

When David wrote beside Hal's picture, that got her attention. She reached over, refreshed her blue paint, and coloured in the triangle roof of the house. Then she sat back, waiting.

"Um, our roof isn't blue, is it?" Asked Hal, confused.

"No, and we don't have exactly four windows, and smoke isn't a green spiral. She doesn't know what it is, she's just joining in." David repressed a growl of frustration, and instead drew a Christmas tree shape in green. "Decorate that."

Hal put red lines of tinsel across the green shape, and a yellow star above it. Once again, the girl filled the shape in with blue.

David drew a long triangle with two shorter ones on top of it, and two dots for eyes. Moving out of turn, her hand hovered briefly under the drawing. The two men stared at the swirling squiggle.

"My Arabic is rusty, but I'll bet that says 'dog'," said David, eventually.

"That's a-? Oh... I see." Hal drew a circle, then a longer horizontal line that seemed to pass behind it. Above the line, he traced the outlines of a trapezium. When he pulled away, the girl finished his picture, adding a series of struts around the outside. "Oh, my God! This is crazy!"

"What's it meant to be?" Asked David, tilting his head. She kept going, tracing a squashed triangle on the side without the circle and a flatter one on the other. "It's the car, isn't it?"

"From her perspective." He took his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt, only narrowly missing smearing them with paint. "This means she's been paying attention the whole time!"

They stood back and watched as she grew more involved in the fingerpainting. She drew picture after picture, some they recognised, some they didn't; a grid of black squares must surely be the inside of her cage, but a cluster of circles could have been anything. Every now and again she'd squiggle what could be a word. David could translate the French, the German, the Japanese and the Russian. He could recognise the Korean, the Greek and the Arabic. Hal went and fetched his laptop, and they eventually worked out that other words were in Hindi and Coptic. More still were unrecognisable, either because of the nature of the medium, or because the languages had been dead for thousands of years.

"She's a space alien," said Hal, in conclusion. "They've been monitoring our communications since human civilisation began. Her ship crashed, and she was captured. The government ordered Biocorp to create supersoldiers from her DNA."

"She's a girl who knows fifty words in twenty languages. She can't pick up a spoon. I really can't see her in a space ship." David knew better than to get annoyed; frankly he was surprised that Hal had been able to keep a lid on his bizarre theories for this long.

"What if the space aliens made her as a decoy, or an information-collecting probe, or as a vector to spread a deadly virus among humankind so we're softened up before they invade?"

Dave prodded the man in the stomach. "How much softening up do you need? Besides, those two from the company would have got in contact if there was anything unusual in her DNA."

"Shouldn't they have gotten in contact with us by... now... anyway..." Hal asked, trailing into silence even as it occurred to him.

There was a long, silent pause. He sat on the floor and started typing rapidly on his laptop. David was still frozen. "Shit. I knew I should have killed those little bitches."

"I'm not finding anything about a brutal double murder," said Hal.

"They'd have trained their goons better than that. They'll have dragged them back to the company, or eaten them or something." His hand went to his cigarettes as he paced in agitation. "Maybe the toxin reduces your body to nothing more than dust and slime. No news is bad news, Hal, very bad news."

"I'm going back down all the routes I first found them. If none of them have changed in the past few days, that's going to be unusual, but even if that's the case, it doesn't mean they've been slaughtered." The light from the screen reflected in his glasses, turning his eyes into blank disks. "I mean, it hasn't been long. It can take two weeks to get certain test results. Every thing's going to be – huh."

"What?"

"'Hello, Otacon. I am on an extended sabbatical. I'm sorry about running off on you like this, but there's nothing else I can do.'"

David hesitated. "That's an obvious plant."

"Maybe... but it's hidden in the source code for a page of gene sequences in geraniums." He was still tapping keys, more slowly now. "You could be right, but... This was done really fast. No encryption, and not hidden from any but the most casual observer. It's so pathetic, no one would expect us to believe Hank did this."

"But he's a geneticist, not a programmer."

"Geez, Dave, a fourth-grader could do better than this. It has to be him. Any decoy would be cleverer."

He crouched down beside Hal. Strings of numbers and gibberish filled the screen, except for the few lines of text he'd read out. "Fuck, it's all Coptic to me. If that's what you think, I trust you. But I still wish I'd killed them while I had the chance."

"Why didn't you?"

Hal's tone was mild and unaccusing as ever. David stared at the stone tiles between his feet for a moment. "They look like kids, Hal. I can't shoot a little girl. They were tied up. It would have been murder. If I'd woken up and found them clawing you, I'd have done it in the heat of the moment, but shit, shooting your unarmed prisoners is a whole level I hope I never go to."

The programmer put his hand on David's back, and opened his mouth to say something reassuring. Then his brows furrowed. "Wait, woken up? I thought you said you were on watch?"

"Well, I... might have... closed my eyes, for a second." There was a hollow clunk. "Oh look, a distraction!" David jumped to his feet. The girl had run out of blue paint, and pushed the empty tray onto the floor. The sheets of paper in front of her was thickly coated with glyphs, symbols and pictures. "I do _not_ understand how she kept this brain secret from us."

"It's probably something to do with the whole genetically modified laboratory experiment space alien thing. We really ought to find someone who knows what they're doing to look after her."

"Who can we trust?" David asked, refilling the paint tray. He carefully lifted the damp sheet of paper and put it on the kitchen side to dry, and pulled another one in front of her. "And what if more of those things come after her?"

"But what are we going to do next time we have to go?"

"Well... She can look after herself, right? If we left some dog biscuits open, and a tap dripping -" He caught Hal's horrified stare. "I'm kidding! We can get in contact with Naomi, she'd probably be fascinated in her."

"I don't want her to get dissected!"

"Naomi wouldn't dissect her." Probably.

"She could back you up! You saw how she shot those two things."

"No, I didn't. I was unconscious. For all we know, they could have tried to talk her into going back, and she didn't want to."

Hal sighed, and looked down. The girl had started painting again on her fresh sheet of paper, just two pictograms. A thick line made by two fingers, with two dots under it, and a pair of circles with dots in. "Hey... has she painted us?"

David grinned, and put his hand to his bandanna. "I think she's really captured you, Hal." He reached for the red paint, and drew a curved red smudge with two eye-dots under it. "That's you!" She didn't respond, so he drew a long, narrow arch with a thin triangle on top. "You're the one with red hair and claws, see?"

"I thought you said she was deaf?"

"She doesn't understand, anyway. Do you? Not a freakin' word." As he said that, she looked at him and raised the index and middle fingers of her left hand to her forehead. Disbelief at what this previously silent, motionless creature was doing had long ago been displaced. "Or maybe we're still in the process of devising a mutual lexicon."

She turned to Hal, made a c-shape with her hand and held it up to her eye, as if adjusting imaginary glasses. The man gave a short, hysterical giggle, and copied her. "I can't believe it! We ought to be recording all this. It's got to be incredible evidence of something!"

Her sign language had left tribal markings of blue on her face, and while her clothes were reasonably clean except for the dangling sleeves, David realised Hal and he were spattered with paint. He glanced down. "Hey, Hal. There's paint on your computer."

"WHAT!" Hal jumped to his feet, panicking. "Ahh! It's everywhere!"

"You're just spreading it around. Put it on the worktop, and I'll have a go at it with white spirit later."

"You stay away from my laptop!"

"Scared I'm gonna read your gay porn?"

"I don't have any gay porn!"

"Sure, Hal, sure." He'd led the girl over to the sink, and was trying to wash their hands with washing up liquid. It wasn't really working. The bits that were still wet washed away, but the paint that had dried seemed to have ingrained itself into the pores of their skin. "You're gonna have to shut down your computers. The washing machine sucks up power like a bitch."

Hal was still poking anxiously at his laptop, too worried to really rise to David's bait. "Oh, God! What if it never comes off?"

"Write the letters on top of the paint."

"That's not the point!"

Knowing there was nothing he could do or say in a situation like this, David raised the girl's arms and tugged her jumper over her head. "Just stick everything with paint on it in the utility room and lock the door, then you can let the dogs back in. And put the boiler on overtime."

No matter how desperate the circumstances or how urgent the mission, whenever they stayed in a hotel, David stole all the miniature toiletries. It was almost a compulsion, developed by years of on-site procurement. And who's laughing now, he thought grimly, as he poured tiny bottles of bubblebath under the running water. White froth foamed up like soapy snow. He took the girl's hand and put it in the bath, trying to gauge her reaction which was, of course, non-existent. He added more cold water.

"Better too cold than too hot, huh? If your teeth start chattering, I'll make it warmer," said David, as he pulled her clothes off and lifted her into the tub.

Downstairs, full-throated barking was steadily increasing in volume, until Hal got the door open and the huskies flooded in. He was shouting futilely for their attention, but the dogs raced upstairs, baying like hounds on the scent. Ignoring the shouts of the two men, they charged into the bathroom and leapt at David, licking at his face and hands.

The girl knelt up and put her hands around the muzzle of the dog closest to her. It fell silent. She repeated the process with the next one, and, as the rest of the pack noticed, all barking ceased.

"You're going, before you replace me as pack leader," David told her.

"All this time, she's been communicating with the dogs," said Hal, a note of wonder in his voice. "Why didn't we notice?"

"A lot of dog communication is body language," the musher pointed out. "If she's deaf, she probably couldn't even tell that we were talking."

"Wow, just imagine." Hal's eyes were wide. "Trapped at the mercy of species you can't even tell if it's possible to understand." Suddenly, his mind seemed to process the scene in front of him. "Hey... what are you doing?"

David scrubbed at the girl's paint-streaked face with a flannel. "Playing the violin to the King of France, Hal, what's it look like?"

"But, um, she's naked."

"That is generally considered the most efficient manner in which to bathe."

"Well, shouldn't..." Hal blushed. "Shouldn't I be the one doing that? I mean, I'm the..."

Swivelling to look at him, David eyeballed Hal. "I'm gonna assume that you're so gay, you can't tell the difference between a woman and a lab experiment. And what about that anime stuff, huh? All those prepubescent girls wandering around bareass? Sailor Moon? Elfen Lied? Who's the closet perv here?" He rubbed bubbles into the girl's hair, making it stick up in brown spikes, like a hedgehog. "And who gave you the monopoly on homosexuality?"

"Hey! That's... Wha?"

"Jesus, this shit's indelible," said Dave, attacking the paint on her hands with a pumice stone.

"No! You can't be gay! You're always making fun of me!" He hesitated. "Which annoys me because I'm not gay!"

"Shut up, Hal."

"What about Sniper Wolf? What about Meryl?"

"No, really, shut up. You have the simplest psychology since a jock locked a nerd in a locker. You're hopelessly drawn to people who're bigger and stronger than you. Liking dogs helps, too." He gave up with the pumice stone, and started washing the girl's back. "Fuck it, you can look like Vulcan Raven until your skin sheds."

Hal was going bright red. "But are you telling me you're _gay_?"

"Things are never black and white on a battlefield, Hal. Ah, you're as clean as you're gonna get." David stood the girl up and wrapped a big, white towel around her before lifting her out of the bath and pushing a dog out of the way with his foot so he could put her down. "You going to stand there and discuss psychology, or do you want to find her some clean clothes?"

"When have you even _watched_ Elfen Lied?" he shouted as he went to see if there was anything left in his wardrobe that might vaguely fit her.

"You know what the bad guys are like for thinking crazy shit up. Who knows where they get their inspiration? Forewarned is forearmed."

"Is that a really bad pun?" He returned with spare clothing, picking his way through the thronging huskies to stand beside David. "Do you think shorts will be okay?"

David took the long, baggy shorts, and began manoeuvring her into them. "Can you order skirts on the internet? There's got to be an easier was of doing this."

"Maybe she'll learn to dress herself."

"She already can, she's just doing this to wind me up." He pulled t-shirts and jumpers over her head, working her arms through the sleeves. "Ah, there we go. Very pretty."

The girl stood there for a moment, until she became aware that she was free to go. She ran out of the bathroom door, and the twenty dogs leapt to their paws and rushed after her in happy, heedless, tail-wagging silence. It was more than enough to knock Hal off balance. He yelled and grabbed at David, who seemed also to slip and trip over backwards. Hal shrieked as they fell, until they splashed into the water.

When he opened his eyes, all he could see was white bubbles and David's face above him. "You meant to do that!" He gasped, trying to wriggle out from under the man.

"What if I did?" David was lying on top of Hal, his hands behind their head, twined in their wet, blonde hair. He grinned, pinning the man more securely as he tried to get free. "What a way to wind up, huh?" He lowered his head until his mouth was level with Hal's ear, and whispered, "This answer any questions for you?"

"Ah, uh..." David shifted his weight again, and Hal realised that was not his gun. "Um..." The man above him gave a rumble of laughter, and pressed his lips to Hal's. Any thoughts the smaller man was trying to form crystallised and shattered. When David nuzzled his chin up to kiss and nip at his throat, he managed to beg, "Oh God, Dave, please -"

Sliding his hand between their bodies, David began stroking Hal through his wet jeans. The man responded very favourably indeed, pressing his hips towards David's hand, so he undid their flies and reached for Hal's cock. He pressed the man down into the bubbles and kissed him hard as his palm slid over their wet flesh.

Hal threw his head back and gave a desperate cry through gritted teeth as he came, the sound making Dave ache with need. The man went limp, gasping for breath and trembling all over, and for a moment David thought he must have misjudged their signals. Then he slid his legs out from under the muscular soldier, knelt up, and struggled with shaky hands to undo their belt and trousers.

Oh, he hadn't misjudged at all. Hal bent his head to lick and kiss and suck, while David shut his eyes and tried to keep still. "Fuck, yes," he hissed, wrapping his hand in Hal's hair and trying not to yank. "Hal, I'm gonna come," he gasped. The man didn't pull away, but redoubled his efforts until Dave was a quivering, whimpering wreck.

Sitting up, Hal effortlessly pushed David over backwards and lay on top of him, panting for breath. David reached up, pulled him close and kissed him, pushing his tongue into Hal's mouth possessively. They lay together in the warm water, listening to the bubbles pop.

"Why did you do that?" Hal asked, resting his head on David's chest.

He raised his hand to stroke their wet hair. "Because I like you."

"How much do you like me?

"I love you."

A hot, red blush spread over Hal's cheeks and seemed to sink into his whole body. He snuggled closer to David, but suddenly noticed something missing. "Hey, where are my glasses?" pushing himself up a little to search for them, he noticed something else. "Gaah! The door is wide open! What if the girl had just wandered in?!"

"She wouldn't." One hand still around Hal's waist, David fumbled around for their glasses with the other. "You didn't lock the front door when you came in. She's running through freshly fallen snowdrifts with the huskies." His questing fingers found a wire frame. "Got 'em."

"Oh God, I completely forgot!" He clambered out of the bathtub. "She's not wearing any shoes, we'd better find her before her toes drop off."

"You'd better change into dry clothes first, or you'll freeze solid." David stepped, dripping, onto the rug. He pulled his shirt and trousers off, then turned to Hal. "Want some help?"

"Dave, no! We've got to..."

"I know." He peeled the wet shirt from Hal's skinny chest. "But if I leave the room, can I be sure you won't just change the subject when I come back in?"

"I won't." Hal took David's hand, and kissed the damp palm. "But lets go and find her before we make hot chocolate and curl up on the sofa, okay?"

It was sensible advice. They dried themselves, and smiled at the awkward moment when they had to go into their separate bedrooms to get dressed. In the kitchen, puddles of water on the floor indicated where snow had recently been allowed to blow inside. The men pulled on their boots and jackets, then waded out into the two feet of fresh snowfall.

"Hey, kid!" David yelled.

"Don't you know she's deaf?"

Hal and Dave turned as one. A man dressed all in white Arctic gear stood against the wall, regarding them calmly.

"And she's mine."

* * *

(1)"My hovercraft is full of eels."(2) 

(2)No, really.

Thank you to everybody who left reviews! You lovely people, you.


	5. Chapter 5

Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima, but they're my bitches.

* * *

Echoes

"And who the hell are you?" David asked calmly. He was suddenly keenly aware of the absence of any sort of firearm close to hand. He could still drop this stranger if he had to, but only if he maintained the element of surprise.

"We'll get to that. Follow me." He walked a few steps to the corner of the house, and peered around. "Look, there she is. "

Hal followed the man, and Dave followed Hal. The girl was running around with the dogs, one minute chasing, the next being chased. Snow was kicked up by her bare feet, and sparkled in the sun. David had made up his mind to knock the stranger out, tie him up in the garage and find out who he was working for, when he raised a radio to his mouth and said "Now."

She fell forward, a spray of blood from her head, before they heard the shot. Hal put his hands to his mouth and screamed, and would have run towards her if David hadn't caught him and pulled him to his chest.

"A real soldier," said the man, approvingly. "He's right, Otacon. I have several snipers trained on your position, so you don't want to go running off like that."

The dogs were yelping and whining in confusion. David stared numbly at where her small body lay, a dark patch in the snow, blood staining it red. She was dead. Hal was struggling and crying against him, begging to be let go, she could still be alive.

"Let's go," said the man into the radio. A dozen men in alpine camouflage ran out of the dense pine trees a few hundred metres away. They pulled Hal and Dave apart, bound their wrists behind their backs and blindfolded them. David could hear Hal still sobbing as they were marched down the long track from his house to the road.

He wondered if it was true about the snipers, and if it was better to die without ever knowing that you might. Fear clenched a tight fist in his guts, not of death but of what fate they were being guided blindly towards, of humiliation and torture and the undoing of everything they had tried to make.

He could displace his grief for the girl. It was like a hard, cold stone inside him. She was dead. He was alive. Hal was alive. The dogs...

He'd heard no further gunfire. If he didn't betray any concern over their fate, his huskies might live too. They would surely be searching his house now, rifling through his possessions, taking Hal's computers to search.

Finding her paintings.

They hadn't even given her a fucking _name_.

The ground beneath his feet suddenly grew uneven, and he almost stumbled. Hard hands grabbed him, and a gun was pressed into his back. "Don't try anything," one of them said. "If I kill you, what will happen to your friend?"

David said nothing. The first man, the leader, suddenly called a halt. "Snake," he said patiently. "My men are in charge here. If one of them talks to you, you say, 'yes sir'. If I talk to you, you say, 'yes, Captain'. Well?"

David ground his back teeth together. He'd be damned before this man was his Captain.

The man tsked, then barked an order. There was a sound like an axe hitting a tree, and Hal gave a cry of pain. "Snake?" Asked the man.

"Yes, Captain."

"If you fuck around, I'll hurt him."

"Yes, Captain." Burn in hell, you miserable fucker, I'll kill you and anyone who looks like you at the first chance I get.

The company moved on. David guessed they'd been walking for a mile or two when they came to the helicopter. The two captives were hustled inside, but David was pushed to his knees in a corner and lost track of Hal. A pair of ear-defenders were placed on his head, but when the rotors started up, the thundering roar seemed to shake his bones. If it was a Chinook, the helicopter could fly for around five hours at top speed. It could land on a waiting boat, where the journey would continue. They could be smuggled to a secret Patriot base. He wondered if this is what happened to Hank and his big friend.

He feels a sick ache as thoughts of the dogs arise. They will be shot, or starve. He should have sold them. He knew he should have sold them.

To wait patiently was hard when you had no idea how long the journey would be. He concentrated on his breathing, trying to calm himself. You've been here before, he told himself. Keep your head down and your eyes open. Relax. Pretend you're asleep. Shake the bastards with the guns up, like that bit in Aliens.

Time had slipped from his grasp when the aircraft touched down. The ear-defenders were removed, and he was pulled to his numb feet to be marched across the landing pad. He could hear a wire gate being opened in front of him. There was a halt as it closed, then the next one opened. Now they were away from the helicopter, he could hear the sea, but the ground was too steady to be the deck of a ship. The series of gates came to an end, and they entered a building.

Someone tore the blindfold off, and Snake flinched as a spotlight hit his eyes. There were shouted orders in the distance, and an electronic buzz.

"Strip!" Screamed a man.

He began to undress. Something struck him from behind, hard enough to send him sprawling.

"You will address all guards as 'Sir'! If you are spoken to, you will respond 'yes, Sir'!"

"Yes, Sir!" He got to his feet and continued to take his clothes off. Once he was naked, the guards seized him and he was searched – mouth, armpits, groin, arse. The usual. He was dragged out of the painfully bright spotlight, and pushed into a tiled corridor with a row of jets in the ceiling, spraying alternately freezing water and some harsh-smelling, stinging chemical. When he scrambled out of the de-lousing shower, shivering and blinking his streaming eyes, something was flung at him and he was told to dress. A cheap tracksuit, faded to a felt-like grey with age and repeated washes, and black rubber-soled slip on shoes, like a child's plimsolls, the staples of a prison uniform.

A guard held out a thick rubber band to him. "Tie that fucking pansy hair up!"

"Yes, sir!"

"If it's ever untied during an inspection, I'll shave your fucking head!"

"Yes, sir!"

He was shoved into a security airlock, and the steel doors shut behind him. After a few seconds, the ones in front of him opened, and he walked out into a large, windowless hall made out of concrete, like a basketball court in a nuclear bunker. Right in front of him was an expectant crowd of grinning faces belonging to big, brutal men. Most were missing teeth, and all were wearing cheap grey tracksuits. A few metres away, Otacon was pressed against the wall, hair wet, eyes red, teeth chattering. They'd taken his glasses, but he seemed to be in one piece.

So they were in prison. Unpleasant, but easy. And the men standing in the echoing concrete hall, looking at them with hunger and anticipation, would be the other inmates. And what happened next would depend on what they did.

A seven foot monster covered with tattoos, most of which looked like they'd been done here, made a move towards Otacon. Snake quite pointedly went and stood in front of the small, shaking man.

It had been a long, stressful day, and what Snake thought he'd most like to do was take someone by the front of their shirt and spread their nose all over their face with his forehead, so he did.

There was maybe two seconds of reflective silence.

When the entire prison population rushed forward, he met their challenge with relish. There were too many of them for strategy. His only plan was to hit as many of them as hard as he could. He drove his fist into one man's solar plexus, and on the back swing his elbow smashed another's jaw. It was dirty, economical fighting, and Snake was very good at it, much better than thirty five weak, hungry prisoners. The trick was to thrash around as hard as you could, using your own skull as a weapon, so they couldn't get a hold on you. Kicks were a bad idea, too – take your feet off the floor, and you'd find yourself on your back, he thought, as he grabbed a man's ankle and casually broke his leg.

Three sharp blasts on a whistle bought the brawl to an abrupt halt. His blood still singing with adrenalin, Snake couldn't work out what was going on for a few moments, until he saw a few men hurriedly pulling their hair into ponytails with bleeding-knuckled hands. Clearly, everyone was a pussy for the guards. At least he knew what signified an inspection now.

The guards wore dark green uniforms and black balaclavas, and carried long, black truncheons ready for use at all times. Bulky lines of body armour were visible under their clothes, and they undoubtedly had further, concealed weapons. Eight of them were going around the mob of prisoners with little enough concern, and Snake guessed there must be snipers in the gantries. Either that, or they'd really beaten submission into these father-stabbing motherfuckers.

Two of them were holding polythene sacks, and four more were handing out small cardboard boxes. The other two made a beeline for him and Otacon, and one of them held out a small piece of plastic. Snake took it. It was a keycard with the number 37 printed on it. The other tossed Otacon a couple of folded blankets.

"Got a violence artist, have we?" said one.

"Yes, sir," replied Snake.

"That one your little bitch, eh?"

Otacon started to say "N-", so Snake grabbed the back of his neck and pushed him to his knees.

"You're whatever I tell you you are," he growled warningly. He straightened up, and turned to the guards. "Yes, sir, he's my bitch, sir."

The men sneered and laughed, but moved away without using their truncheons. Snake accepted his cardboard box, then let Otacon get to his feet and collect one. There were another three whistle blasts, and everyone who could relaxed and moved away. Those who were still on the floor, clutching various parts of themselves, were treated where they lay by the guards.

Following the general wandering of the other inmates, Snake made his way to the far end of the hall. Otacon followed closely, but the soldier didn't even look at him. He was too busy watching everyone else, seeing if anybody wanted to start on them again, or if this whole place was in a constant state of tension, always one punch away from a riot.

No one seemed to be paying them any attention now, though. The priority seemed to be to get the hell away from wherever the guards were, and they went through a doorless doorway and into a long, narrow corridor. On either side, there were numbered doors; So these were the cells.

He waved the card key in front of door 37, and it unlocked with a click. Pushing Otacon in front of him, he shut the door and waved the card again. To his surprise, it locked.

Behind him came the unmistakable sound of Otacon about to cry. He turned and took the man by the shoulders, hissing into his ear, "They are listening to everything we say, and watching everything we do."

But he dropped his load and collapsed against Snake, bursting into tears. He was trying to say something, but was too hysterical to breathe, let alone make himself understood. Snake slid to his knees, pulling Otacon close. "I'm sorry," the soldier breathed. "About earlier. I didn't mean what I said, but-"

"I know, I know," sobbed the man, pressing his face into their shoulder. "I'm sorry for being so stupid. God, Snake, she's dead."

He'd hoped Otacon would still have some of that hopeless optimism to keep him going, but it seemed Shadow Moses had been harsh teacher. "Yeah."

"She was playing, and they shot her..."

"It was very quick. She had no idea what was going to happen." It was small comfort, but all he had to offer. "She didn't feel a thing." Otacon said nothing, but his convulsive, body-wracking sobs slowly subsided into the quiet weeping Snake knew he could keep up all night. He hadn't been this bad since the night they'd spent in the cabin after they'd fled Fox Archipelago. Snake had shouted at him then, yelling into the warm darkness for him to shut up. Now he couldn't muster the anger. Instead, he held the man in his arms and felt him shake, trying to breathe in his scent under the mustiness of the tracksuit and the harsh reek of the chemical sterilisation. "Jesus, you're freezing."

"They took my glasses," he said mournfully. "What are they going to do to us?"

"Try and find out if we know anything, I guess." That was more than enough on that subject. He picked up one of the coarse blankets, and used one end of it as a towel, scrubbing hard at Otacons' wet hair. "Get off the floor, it'll make you colder."

His damp hair sticking up in spikes, he numbly stood up. "We're in prison, aren't we?"

"Yeah." There was a narrow bunk along one wall, just a thin sheet of foam on top of a concrete shelf, and he guided the man over to it. "Just do as I say when we're out there, and you'll be alright." He sat beside Otacon, and took stock of the room. There was a metal toilet bowl cemented into the floor, and a tap sticking out of the wall over a drain beside it. A small, round light covered in a heavy mesh on the ceiling. And that was it.

"What happened to your hair?" Otacon asked.

"Wha-? Oh." He reached up and carefully teased the rubber band out, putting it around his wrist for later use. "Fucking screws, and they call a mullet pansy hair. They'll want me to put it in bunches next." Retrieving the damp blanket, he dried his own hair as best he could, then started to shake it out in an attempt to get it dry before they needed it. "Open up those boxes. Let's see what else they generously bestowed upon us."

Cold fingers fumbled with the thick cardboard. "It's packets and stuff," announced Otacon. "Biscuits: brown. Eww, rations!"

Snake spread the blanket over the edge of the bunk, and took the box. A grin spread slowly over his face. "Good news! This is a British Army 24-hour ration pack, the best in the world." He tipped the contents out and searched through them.

"British? Why? What have the British got to do with this place?"

"Maybe nothing. You can buy 'em surplus. They don't have much tinned stuff, and a tin's a potential weapon, so that'd be a point in their favour." What tinned foods there were had been removed and repackaged. There were packets of biscuits, pouches of porridge oats, dried fruit bars, and cartons of processed meat in the vague forms of hamburgers. "People travel thousands of miles in an airtight storage container for these. You can count yourself damn lucky."

Otacon made a hopeless sort of face. "Can I?" Snake tore open a foil package, and handed him a biscuit, which he bit into without much enthusiasm. It was like a compressed sheet of stale raisin toast. "Um... I guess that's not too bad." The food awakened his appetite, which hadn't bothered him all day. "And this has to last us 24 hours?"

"Don't forget we got _two_ of them!" He picked up the other, and rummaged through it for the thin pack of toilet paper. There was even a sliver of soap in each box, wrapped in wax-paper. "Guess they don't want dysentery, even in a military prison."

"We can't be in military prison! I'm not even a soldier!"

"It's the only thing I can think of to compare it to. It's not a lot like civilian jail."

Otacon eyed him suspiciously. "How often have you been to prison, exactly?"

"I've never been to prison! I just, y'know, research!"

He smirked. "Sure, Snake, sure. I believe you." Suddenly, his face crumpled, and he put his head in his hands. "My laptop..."

Snake sighed, and hugged Otacon again. He leaned down and brushed his lips over their forehead. "Look on the bright side."

"What's that?"

"They might not bother interrogating us."

The programmer groaned, and shrunk down further. "That is _not_ a bright side." He sat back, and pulled his knees up to his chest. "What are we meant to do now?"

"It's your turn to wave the blanket," said Snake, getting down on the cold concrete floor and starting his daily press ups. "Ever play chess in your head?"


	6. Chapter 6

Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima. Hostage negotiations are underway

* * *

Echoes

An alarm clanged three times. Snake was awake at the first bell, shoving Otacon to his feet at the second, and twisting the elastic band into his hair at the third. The lock clunked back, and a guard shoved the door open. He cast a cursory glance around the cell. "Out at the next bell!" He shouted.

"Yes, sir!"

"Yes sir," mumbled a quasi-conscious Otacon, after a nudge from Snake. When the door was slammed shut again, he slumped back into a sitting position on the edge of the bunk. "Mmmph... need coffee..."

"There's porridge oats and water," Snake said. He used the toilet, then stripped and washed quickly under the tap. "_Fuck_, that's cold." Drying himself on the corner of a blanket, he nudged Otacon again. "Go and wash your face. You'll feel better."

"I want to brush my teeth," he moaned, shuffling over to the corner with the drain. "I'm still tired. What time is it?"

"I dunno. Six am?"

Mumbling vague complaints, he gingerly splashed his face with water. Snake handed him a paper pouch of something that looked like wallpaper paste and tasted like oat cereal, and he tried to eat it without spilling any down his jumper. Suddenly, a thought that had been nagging at him since last night broke through. "Snake. How long are we going to be here?"

"I don't know. When we're out there, don't say anything to anyone except the guards, and then only 'yes, sir', and then only if they speak to you first. Don't even look at anyone except me. Let me do all the talking. And try not to cry."

"Are we going to be here for the rest of our lives?"

"Didn't see any old men out there."

That was true. Just strong men in their prime. Otacon was by far the weakest, and probably one of the youngest. He would have questioned Snake further, but the alarm siren sounded again. They threw the blankets onto the bed, and joined the stream of inmates hurrying towards the big hall. Everyone went through the doorway, then hung around in the corner, waiting for something to happen.

Otacon stood on his tiptoes, trying to see what was happening, but one of the guards standing in the middle of the hall blew a whistle. The whole crowd surged forward like a herd of wildebeest going to drink. They filed past a huge plastic bin heaped with small, shiny things, and everybody picked one up. He followed suit, and looked at the thick metal ring in his hand as everyone moved towards the next bin, a little further along the wall. There they all took another metal component. This one was shaped like a bolt. Otacon stared at them for a second, until he noticed that all around him men were screwing the two pieces together. He copied them. They carried on walking around the hall until they came to another big plastic bin, this one empty. The completed items were dropped in there.

Then they did it again.

After the first few circuits, he began working things out in his head. The little rings were about two centimetres tall, and perhaps four centimetres across. That meant a volume of about 25cm3. Whereas the containers were square, at least a metre tall, and around three metres by two metres across. So that was a volume of 6,000,000cm3, which meant it contained at least two hundred and forty thousand rings. There were thirty six people working, so that meant they'd all have to walk around the hall at least six thousand, six hundred and sixty seven times. He timed the next three trips in his head and worked out the average. To walk around the hall took approximately seventy seconds, so to screw together all of the components would take them five and a half days.

He started picking up more than one at a time.

They can't possibly expect us to do all of them, he thought. This must be a weeks' worth.

If the hall was forty-five metres long and twenty metres wide, that meant every thousand circuits was one hundred and twenty kilometres. Nobody could walk that far in these useless slip-on shoes. Otacon couldn't have walked that far if he hadn't spent the night shivering on a block of concrete, pressed up against Snake for warmth.

He'd spent months dreaming of lying beside Solid Snake, and the first time it happened was because they'd been abruptly flung into some sort of dumping-ground for mercenaries, a gulag for those who made trouble for the big corporations of the world. Who had owned the gene-splicing laboratory where the girl had been found? Even the major pharmaceutical companies didn't have the money or the political weight to keep a place like this.

Did they?

Maybe it was all linked. Maybe it was true that the whole world was the property of a handful of men, and those who annoyed them too often were effortlessly disappeared. But why hadn't he and Snake been killed? It would have been a simple matter to wait a few more minutes until they'd both left the cabin in search of the girl, and pick them all off quickly and cleanly.

They hadn't even tried to recapture her. Surely, she represented quite an investment of time and money? Not merely a direct clone, but with specialised adaptations that nanomachines and other mechanical alterations could only partly explain. She was the creature with the antidote. Didn't that count for anything?

But they had shot her in the head with a supersonic sniper round, like a dangerous animal they were hunting. And he and Snake were left alive, when surely by now they had learned everything they could want from his computers. Perhaps their deaths would come later, when whoever kept them here decided they were of no further use.

Otacon tripped over his own feet, stumbling into the back of the man in front of him and interrupting his morbid daydreams. He glanced over at the guards, and tried to work out if they'd noticed, but he could see nothing at that distance. His uncertainty was resolved when someone grabbed his collar in a gloved fist and dragged him backwards for a few steps. He was too scared to scream, and any sound he made was drowned first by the jangle of a handful of metal objects hitting the floor, then the strike of a baton across his shoulders.

The guard reached down, took Otacon by the front of his jumper, pulled him to his feet and bellowed into his face, "Wake up!"

Overcoming his numb, stupid terror with a gargantuan effort, he managed to shout, "Yes, sir!" before the truncheon descended again. The man sneered, but dropped him, and he was allowed to collect up the pieces of metal he'd dropped and rejoin the shuffling herd of men.

* * *

Eventually, the whistle sounded again. Snake took Otacon's wrist, and led him back to the cell. The smaller man was limping, and as soon as the door closed, he sat on the bunk and reached down to pull his shoe off.

"Don't. It'll be worse when you put it back on." Kneeling on the floor, Snake was already opening packages of food. Trembling with exhaustion, Otacon stared down at him. When Snake held a paper carton of processed meat and a food bar out to him, he automatically took it. "Come on, eat."

"How can you be so..." He didn't really have anything to end that sentence with, and trailed off into silence as the other man wolfed his rations.

"It's only been a few hours of walking, Otacon," replied Snake. He got to his feet, and pulled the skinny programmer's shirt up over his back. There was a deep red mark, rapidly darkening to a bruise, across his shoulders. Leaning over, he touched his lips gently to the man's back. "Don't tell me you can't walk a few miles." He stood back, and pointed to the food Otacon was still listlessly holding. "Eat it."

Perhaps half an hour later, the alarm sounded again, and they trudged out to spend the rest of the day making mind-numbing circuits of the grey concrete hall. Otacon ran out of things to calculate, and every time he let his mind wander he saw Wolf or the girl dead in the snow. With every step, all he could think about was how the layers of skin on his toes were being rubbed apart and filling with fluid until every movement was pain.

He had thought hacking could be boring. At least it didn't hurt.

They walked for hours, and the heaps of metal components slowly dwindled, until he had to stretch and scrabbled for the last few, and Snake had to reach out and knock some within his reach. When the last pieces were dropped onto the heap in the collection bin, the whistle blew, and the day's work (eight hours? Twelve? Twenty?) was over. He was asleep on his feet, and barely noticed when a small cardboard box was placed in his hands.

The next thing he was really aware of was lying on his side on the bunk in their cell with a blanket covering him. His feet hurt. When he sat up to peer closely at them, they'd been wrapped in something white.

"It's toilet paper. Don't touch it." The voice was Snake's, and he sounded angry. He thrust Otacon's cardboard box towards him. "If you don't eat, you'll get weaker and weaker until you die. I don't care if you don't like how it tastes. It's good food. Besides, I thought you thrived on that just-add-water crap."

Otacon's fatigue-worn mind slowly processed the information it had been given. "Do you mean ramen?"

"Yeah. Regretting it now? Wishing you'd put in a few press-ups, a little jogging? Watched what you were eating, instead of nagging me about smoking?"

He shook his head in disbelief. "Why are you angry at _me_?"

Snake shook his head, and sat down beside his partner. He put his arm around Otacon's waist, his hand sliding under the man's shirt to stroke his warm skin. "Because. I'm not. Eat your food."

The rations weren't as bad as they looked. Made mostly out of dehydrated wheat protein and monosodium glutamate, cup ramen was a reasonable comparison. Otacon picked at them doggedly. "I can't do a day like that again, Snake."

"Sure you can. You'll work up some muscle in no time." As if to demonstrate the point, Snake got on the floor and started his daily press-ups.

"How far do you think we walked?"

"Hard to say. Thirty miles?"

"Thirty miles?!" On one hand, it was less than he'd expected. On the other, he'd never walked so far in his life.

"Yeah. And you did okay. So stop worrying. Just eat, do some stretches, then we'll sleep."

"I didn't do okay!"

"You did fine."

Otacon stared at Snake in disbelief, but it was hard to judge the sincerity of a man doing press-ups. "Really?"

"Yeah. That guard got pissy over nothing. They're just trying to scare you. You walked the whole way by yourself, didn't you? You did fine."

Mollified, he ate the rest of his food in silence. Afterwards, he gingerly put his feet on the floor and limped over to the tap to drink cold, lichen-flavoured water. Pausing beside Snake as he did his workout, Otacon gingerly tried to reach down and touch his toes. "Oww..."

"Ninety-nine, one hundred." Snake knelt up, and grabbed Otacon's wrists. "C'mere."

"Woah!" Caught off-balance, the man landed in Snake's lap. "What was that for?"

"Morale," he said, wrapping his arms around Otacon and burying his face in their hair. "It's the third step to help you survive when captured by the enemy. Eat the food, drink the water, and keep up morale." He kissed the back of Otacon's neck.

"I don't want to believe the United States army is training it's troops to turn on each other in a homoerotic frenzy when things get tough."

"Don't you?"

Otacon hesitated. "Well, I-"

With a clunk and a fizz, the light in the ceiling went out, leaving them in pitch darkness. Snake spat a swearword, and Otacon crawled across the floor until he bumped into the bed, then reached for the other man's hand. They wrapped themselves in the blankets and lay down on the thin mattress, Snake next to the wall with Otacon's back against his chest. He put his arm over the man, partly to conserve heat, partly so he could whisper, "I love you. It'll be alright," into his ear.

**

* * *

They were, he was pretty certain, parts of grenades or land mines. He couldn't think of anything made out of comparable parts that anybody would need so many of. It was possible for him to put together eight or nine in a single circuit of the hall, and from what he could see of his fellow inmates' technique, he'd be able to do even more with practice.**

He wondered how many days a week they spent doing this, or if this was the only activity permitted in this prison. It would explain why he and Otacon were attacked when they first came in – any distraction from this monotony, even getting your legs broken, would be welcome.

Snake glanced over at his partner. There was no point in hiding his concern when they spent the evenings talking about how much they loved each other. Some goon on surveillance duty was getting a good laugh, but it was worth it to see Otacon cheer up for a while. The man was doing better than Snake had expected him to. He'd tackled the last few days without complaint, and even seemed to be building up some muscle in his skinny legs.

It was going to be very difficult to get out of here. Prisoners were prevented from speaking to one another or to the guards. There was only one way in or out. They were under constant heavy guard. His equipment consisted of a few pieces of cardboard and plastic foil that were thrown away every afternoon by the prison maid service. He didn't even know where they were. Sometimes, he thought about rushing one of the silent men in their black uniforms, but the ones among the inmates held no long-range weaponry, and the snipers in the gantry would have him in moments.

Things had been tougher. He just couldn't remember when.

* * *

Once Otacon was deep in exhausted sleep, Snake slid to he feet and crept towards the cell door. He'd expected the card key to be disabled at night, but the door clicked open. The corridor beyond was filled with dim yellow light, but he couldn't see any guards. Not that their presence was required... he looked up at the ceiling, but the inevitable security cameras were well hidden.

No point in hanging around looking furtive. He strode out into the corridor, as if he was just stretching his legs, and in no way examining the layout of this underground prison in search of an unguarded exit. There was nothing to see, anyway. Just a long passageway with doors on either side, that ended in a blank wall. In the other direction was the huge, empty hall where their days were spent, and he'd already studied that enough to last a lifetime.

He was going to turn back to his cell, but a guard was standing in front of the door, tapping his baton against his gloved palm. Snake froze, his every instinct screaming at him to either run for cover or kill this man with his bare hands.

"I don't really blame you," said the man. His voice was muffled, but he spoke English with the blandest of unplaceable American accents. "You haven't been here long, and you still think you can get out. But the sooner you learn, the less we'll have to hurt your friend." He turned and walked into the dark cell, and every muscle in Snake's body tensed. There was a short, high-pitched yelp, and he sprinted forward before he could stop himself. A truncheon in the face knocked him back. "Don't mess about, Snake," said the guard in a soft, warning voice. He had Otacon's collar in his fist, and dragged the dazed man out of the room and away towards the only door out of the prison.

He rushed after them, but there was the echoing click of a slide being pulled back from the gantry in the roof of the hall. There was a sniper up there, in the darkness, and Snake was a bright yellow dot in his night-vision scope. The urge to grab the man hauling Otacon to some uncertain fate and kill him was almost enough to overwhelm the sense that kept him where he was, but all it took was a few seconds of hesitation and the pair were gone.

The door slammed shut behind them. Snake stood where he was, wanting to scream. Wanting to sink to his knees and give up.

He returned to the cell, and lay down on the bunk.


	7. Chapter 7

Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima, and he's suing me for property damage.

* * *

Echoes

Otacon covered his face with his hands and drew his knees up to his abdomen as kicks thudded into his body. He thought there were probably five or six guards. He hadn't been blindfolded, but all he could see through his fingers was grey concrete and boots. The only sounds were their grunts of exertion and his own ragged breathing.

It was the first time he'd been grateful that his glasses were gone.

They hadn't asked him anything, just dragged him into this bare room and thrown him to the floor. He didn't know how long they had been beating him for, only that he could taste blood and he wanted to shrink into himself and hide. He twisted on the floor, trying to escape the blows, only incurring more.

When they stopped, he didn't realise for a second, and after that it hurt too much to move, so he was still curled into a ball when he was seized by his shoulder and hauled away. He squeezed his eyes shut, struggling weakly to get to his feet so the rough concrete didn't drag and scrape at the bare skin his torn clothes exposed. Cold air hit the places where his uniform was wet with blood, freezing him. Suddenly, they stopped, and he heard a door creak open. The guard threw him to the floor. The door was closed, and he heard movement in front of him, footsteps coming closer. All he could do was press himself against the cold wall, hands clenched into fists so they couldn't stamp his fingers and held in front of his face.

Gentle fingers took his chin. "Those fucking _animals_," said a man with a soft, worried voice and a South African accent. "Are you alright? Let me get some water."

The stranger stood up and moved away, and Otacon risked opening his eyes. The room was brightly lit, and the walls were white instead of grey. He heard running water, and a blur made its way towards him, resolving itself into a man as he got closer. They were small and thin, wearing a loose tracksuit and a pair of frameless glasses. His feet were bare; suddenly, Otacon noticed how much warmer it was in here than in the unheated prison. More, there was some kind of thin carpet on the floor. Before he could take any more details into his shell-shocked mind, the man was kneeling down by his side.

"My name's Michael," he said, dipping a piece of folded tissue paper into a plastic cereal bowl of hot water and using it to dab at the grazes on Otacon's cheekbones and temples. "What's yours?"

"Otacon," said Otacon, thickly.

Michael met his gaze for a second, then his eyes darted back to the man's injuries. "You know, it'll be much easier if – God, your nose is _gushing_." He reached over and tore off a wad of tissue paper, then held it to their face. Otacon took it, gingerly pinching his nose, wondering if it was broken. Picking up the wet tissue again, Michael returned to cleaning him up. "It'll be easier if you tell them things before they ask," he continued. "There's no way out of here, and they'll find it all out eventually. It's pointless to try and fight."

"They didn't ask me anything," he said, in a muffled voice. Looking down, he could see that his knuckles were grazed, and the front of his pullover was soaked in blood. He thought must look like roadkill.

"Then your partner must have done something." He gave a small, bitter laugh. "It's much easier to hurt you then him, after all."

Otacon looked up sharply, making his head throb and swim. "How do you know-"

"That you have a partner? Well, unless you're going to try and convince me that you're the brawn of the operation, it's fairly obvious."

"What is this place?" He asked, trying to look around with watery eyes.

"Sit still, would you? And don't ask stupid questions." Michael reached down and took the hem of Otacon's jumper. "Raise your arms, I'll wash this for you."

Wincing, he let the man pull the bloodied top over his head. "Aagh... How come they let you keep your glasses?"

The man went over to where he'd gotten the hot water, and turned a tap on. "They didn't. I got them back when I agreed to help them. It's not so bad here, not like it is for the others, the soldiers. Some coding, some cracking, a little mission support. I couldn't have gone on out there anyway." He sighed, leaning over the sink. "I think they like it, you know? Mindlessly following orders, eating cold rations... Makes them feel at home." Suddenly, he brightened and glanced over his shoulder at Otacon. "Hey, do you want a hot shower?"

He had meant to ask Michael if he had a computer in here, what he was coding, what he was cracking, how long had he been here, and what happened to his partner. These and a thousand other questions dissolved, replaced by, "You have a _shower_?"

"Yeah. Seriously, Otacon, if they offer you the chance to work for them, take it." He left the jumper to soak and went over to help his guest to his feet. The bathroom was a whole separate room, with tiles instead of concrete on the walls and floor. Michael half-carried the limping man over to the sink, and told him to lean against, and that was all the warning he gave before he grabbed hold of Otacon's trousers and tugged them down his thighs.

"Uh, um?" Otacon made small, embarrassed noises to indicate that he found this situation awkward, and wished he was fit enough to put up some sort of struggle.

"It's okay," said Michael, and took his own clothes off. Under the grey tracksuit, he was thin and pale. He leaned over, and turned the shower on. Steam and spray folded outward in warm clouds, and he put his hands on Otacon's waist to lead him under the jets of hot water.

"Wait, I don't-" The idea of a hot shower almost made Otacon consider just going along with whatever this guy had planned, but what about Snake? "Uh, I mean-"

"The only camera is behind us, and the shower stops the microphones from working," replied the man, calmly. "Don't say anything, just listen to me. And look down."

He automatically obeyed, trying to look at the floor, or his bruises, and not Michael's cock.

"This place isn't a prison," the man whispered into his ear, as he rubbed shampoo into their hair. "They're working on secret projects here, ones they don't want anybody to know about. Not even the government." His fingers worked over Otacon's scalp, pulling his head close to their lips. "They don't need your partner, whoever he is. If you refuse to do what they say, they'll kill him."

"Who's they?" Hissed Otacon. He leaned forward, his forehead resting against Michael's shoulder as their hands ran over his shoulders.

"Do I need to tell you?" Whispered the man, barely audible over the sound of the water. "The Patriots." As he said the word, he slid his hand over Otacon's balls and kissed him on the lips.

He didn't know whether he was reacting to the information or the touch, but he jerked away and almost slipped over. Michael grabbed him, and pressed him up against the cold tiles.

"Just keep still, would you? This is the only way I can tell you anything. I'm guessing that they already know everything about you and your partner, and mercs are two a penny. All that's keeping you alive- both of you - is what you've got to offer them." He bent his head and pressed his lips to Otacon's chest, speaking between kisses. One hand was in the small of the man's back, and the other was lightly touching his thigh. "We're on an island just off Alaska in the Chukchi Sea. It's too small to even have a name. There's no way to escape."

Oh, God. Otacon could feel himself responding to the man's touch. He tried to think of Snake, but that made it worse. Michael's hand crept around to stroke his hardening cock, and he couldn't move away. The man knelt down, and Otacon gasped, "No, please," but twisted his fingers in their hair, neither pushing him back or pulling him closer, only standing still as they used their lips and tongue. He shut his eyes and leaned against the wet tiles, telling himself he didn't want this. It hurt when he came, tensing bruised stomach muscles.

Michael got to his feet and leaned against Otacon, reaching for his hand. He guided it to his own erection, and the programmer stopped thinking altogether, apart from about how much bigger Snake was, how broad and smooth his cock was, how much he'd rather that it was him here than this cowering little lab rat so much like himself.

They washed with the same thin tablets of soap provided all over the prison, them Michael turned the water off and led Otacon out of the bathroom and over to a bunk, similar to the one in the cell but with a real mattress laid on the white-painted concrete. He handed them a white towel that was only slightly scratchy.

"You can wear one of my uniforms," he said. "They're all the same. I don't think yours will dry out in time, even if we get any warning before they take you back."

Otacon tried to rub himself dry without moving anything that ached too much, then held the damp towel out to the other man. He still felt awkward and tingly. Without trying to sound ungrateful for the intel or the blowjob, he said, "You didn't have to do that."

Michael smiled, and shrugged. He tossed Otacon a shapeless grey uniform, and turned his computer on. "Do you want to watch Martian Successor Nadesco?"

* * *

When the alarm bell went that morning, the guard that slammed the door open and stormed into the cell shouted at Snake to get in front of him and start walking. They marched across the hall, through the security doors, through the room where he'd first arrived, along a series of corridors and through another door. The guard saluted and left.

It was an office. He could tell by the desk and the chair behind it. In the chair sat the man who'd ordered the girl shot, the man who'd demanded to be called Captain. Snake found himself unthinkingly standing to attention.

The man wasn't even looking at him. He was deeply engrossed in a sheaf of papers. Snake tried to get a glimpse of the the title, but it was held away from him. He wondered if it was a confession that Otacon had been tortured into signing, or a transcript of his interrogation.

At last, the man seemed to notice him. He tapped the wad of paper on the desk, like a news reader at the end of a bulletin and laid it down, then steepled his fingers and rested his chin on top of his hands. "Snake," he said.

"Yes, Captain," said Snake.

There was no malice in his voice as he spoke. If anything, he sounded as if he was patiently explaining something to an unreasonable man. "You have no idea what we've done with your little boyfriend, have you?"

"No, Captain."

"You've spent the night thinking, what if I've had his fingernails torn out, or run a soldering iron over his face, or wired him up to the mains, or let my men do what they like with him?"

There was no point denying it. The cameras in the cell would have recorded all the hours he'd lain there on his side, clutching the blankets in bloodless fists, feeling sick with gut-wrenching fear at Otacon's fate. "Yes, Captain."

"What if, because of your... _stupid_ actions, he is lying in a puddle of piss and vomit, bleeding from every orifice, not even understanding why he's here? Have you ever seen someone who's been really _efficiently_ tortured, Snake? Do you grasp what I am capable of?" Waving away Snake's reply, he leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Even life here is hurting him. He's not built for this sort of activity, is he? In the last four days he's walked over one hundred and fifty miles, did you know that? That's the sort of distance a healthy man could manage, if they had to, for a while. But it's not going to stop. How's he going to be coping in a week? A month?" He gestured expansively into the air beside him, and shook his head regretfully.

"Captain," murmured Snake. Oh, you dog-fucking bastard, he thought, whatever you do to him, I'll do to you a hundred times over.

"But you're different from the rest of the scum in here, Snake," continued the man. "I've seen you exercising in the evenings, patching up your man with what's to hand, reconnoitring the environment. You're strong. You're resourceful. I can use you."

Snake realised that the man was waiting for a response from him, but struggled to know what to say. Obviously, 'no' was out of the question. On the other hand, 'yes' had unappealing connotations. "Captain?" He asked.

"I'll make a deal with you. Otacon is nothing to me, I can turn over a rock and find all the mindless academics I want, but if you agree to follow my orders, I won't hurt him. I'll even move him to less Spartan quarters."

Hearing the man's name – his codename, at least – sent a pang of need and fear through Snake. It was too easy to imagine this brutal man crushing his partner. He could only ask and hope that doing so wouldn't doom Otacon. "What orders, Captain?"

He should have smiled grimly, but instead he just gave a grimace of disgust. "There's a lot of things in this world, Snake, that although we wish they did not exist, they do. You, for instance, and your determination to interfere in matters that do not concern you. Does it shock you to learn that you are far from unique?" He gazed evenly at the man before him. "I'll give you a while to think about it. You can weigh up your moral obligations against watching me turn your friend into a screaming mess of human wreckage."

He looked over Snake's shoulder, and gestured to the guard standing outside the open door. This was the signal that the interview was over, and he was lead back to the main hall, where work had already started.

When he saw that Otacon was there, the relief he felt was like a release of physical pain. The man looked exhausted and there were marks of a brutal beating on his face and hands, but he was alive and walking, and he gave a brief but wide smile when he saw Snake. They couldn't talk or touch each other until the midday whistle sounded, and when it finally did, it took all Snake's self-control to saunter casually back to the cell.

Once they were behind the locked door, he turned and wrapped his arms around his partner, wanting to crush the man to his chest, but not knowing how badly he'd been hurt. For a moment he just stood like that, one hand between Otacon's shoulders, the other in the small of his back, feeling the warmth of their skin under the coarse material. It was a new uniform, and his hair smelled clean, as if it'd just been washed. Otacon leaned against him, but didn't put his arms around Snake, only stood with his eyes closed, trembling just slightly. The dread the mercenary had felt before began to creep back. "Otacon. What happened?"

"I..." He shook his head, and pressed his face into the taller man's chest. "Nothing. Nothing. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise." The quaver in Otacon's voice broke Snake's heart. "I was looking around the corridors last night. It was my fault. Tell me what they did, I'll make it better."

"I'm alright," said Otacon again, and he sounded like he was about to cry. Snake didn't push it, and just held the man in his arms.

Whoever had done this to his partner would _die_.

That night, the atmosphere between them was strained with the effort of not talking about the only thing that was happening. They ate in silence, then sat together on the bunk, Otacon in Snakes' lap. The powerful mercenary stroked the small, slim man's dark blonde hair, raging inside at his inability to protect him. He felt he'd dragged the man into this months ago, when he watched him crawl out of that locker, when he'd killed Sniper Wolf, when he'd agreed to Otacon's insane idea of trying to undo the nuclear damage he'd done.

Why had he agreed? It had never been in his nature to study his motives closely; he simply knew whether something felt right or not. Perhaps what had driven him to wage this endless, one-man war was the same thing that had driven Big Boss to create Outer Heaven – a desire to be the master of his own fate. Well, that had all gone to hell now. The whole thing was over, unless he could think of something, anything, to get them out of here.

In his arms, Otacon shifted uncomfortably. He was getting used to the constant aches and pains, learning to put them to the back of his mind, but he was never going to be a stoic. It didn't help that every time Snake touched him he felt a throb of guilt about what he'd done with Michael – he hadn't meant to, hadn't wanted to – and the man had spent hours worried about him, when he'd been watching anime, been getting hurried oral sex – and why? He couldn't even tell Snake what Michael had told him, not here.

He couldn't even bring himself to think about what else the man had said. If it came down to a choice between working for the Patriots or dying... But it wouldn't be him that died. It would be Snake.

"Knight 2 to D-4."

Otacon jumped at the sound, and stared wildly at Snake for a moment, until he realised what the man was talking about. "Oh... sorry! I've forgotten where my pieces were." He grinned ruefully. "I don't understand how you remember them all."

"Nah, I don't. Just wanted to break the silence." Lying back, he pulled the smaller man on top of him, feeling surreptitiously for cracked ribs as he did so, although he doubted even this new, tougher version of Otacon would be able to keep a thing like that quiet for long. "I spy with my little eye something beginning with C."

"Concrete?"

"Nope."

He raised his head from Snake's chest, and looked around the small, enclosed space. "Uh... Cell?"

"Nah, you were right with concrete, I was just trying to make the game last longer. Your turn."

"Okay. I spy with my little eye something beginning with I-F-T."

Snake's brows creased. "I dunno."

"It's an imaginary fire truck. You have think laterally, Snake."

"Oh, Jesus. You're back to normal. I thought you'd be going crazy by now from not being able to link anything to a router." The lights clunked off. "Bedtime. Of course, with your rules, we could always keep playing."

* * *

The next day passed normally, cold rations and mindless work, marching along with a group of men they had everything in common with but knew nothing about. They shared chatter and word games until the lights went out, and were lying in bed when the door was kicked in.

A silent guard grabbed Otacon and dragged him off the bunk and out of the cell. Snake leapt to his feet, and another guard jabbed him in the back with a truncheon. "Get moving!"

Otacon was flung into a bare room, perhaps the same one as the day before. Before he could get up, the toe of a boot was in his chest, pushing him down onto his back. A guard gazed balefully at him through the eye holes of his balaclava, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "We've got your boyfriend back there. What should we do with him?"

Snake was pushed into the office, and someone screamed at him to stand to attention. There was no one behind the desk this time; he was standing and waiting while his partner was in the hands of torturers. Seconds dragged like hours. Finally, he heard footsteps approaching from behind. "Well, Snake?" Snapped the voice of the Captain.

"I'll do whatever you want," said Otacon, unable to hear his own voice over the beating of his heart.

"I'll do anything you order," said Snake, voice shaking with fear and fury.

"Just don't hurt him."


	8. Chapter 8

Hal and Dave are owned by Hideo Kojima, and drink too much coffee.

* * *

Echoes

They were really nice computers.

Otacon eyed then edgily. He'd been assured that his every keystroke was being monitored, that any silly ideas would be swiftly punished, that all he had to do was get on with the work he'd been set and then there would be no problems. They could have a guard sitting in here with him, if it would reduce his desire to do anything other than what he'd been told to. He'd be checked on several times a day as it was, since the filters they were using to examine his activities were very sensitive.

Behind him, the door opened. He jumped, and yelped, "I haven't done anything!"

"I know, I've been watching you for the last hour. Make yourself a coffee and calm down, would you?" When they weren't shouting, the balaclavas muffled the guards' voices. The man standing in the doorway held his left hand up, and tapped the wrist with the index finger his right hand. "You've got quotas to meet."

"Right. Sorry." Aargh! He shouted at himself. Why are you apologising to him? Otacon turned back to the computers, and looked at one blank green screen and one long list of HTML. His hands hovered over the keyboard for a few moments, then he pushed his chair away from the desk and went over to the kettle.

They'd given him his glasses back and he'd been allowed, under close supervision, to brush his teeth, cut his nails and shave. The room was nice. It didn't smell of bleach and lichen and mustiness, but fresh laundry and hot dust. For a few minutes, he'd just stood beside the heater, held his hands over the wire cage that enclosed it, and been _warm_. There was a kettle that cut off at about 60 degrees centigrade, which was hot enough for coffee or making the rations a little more cheerful. There was a drawer full of blunt plastic spoons, and little round plastic jars of coffee and sugar and powdered milk.

There were no wires longer than a few centimetres anywhere. He'd been told that someone would come and replace the batteries in his mouse and keyboard when they needed it. He wondered how many technicians and engineers they'd lost to sudden combinations of despair and determination.

"Hey! Otacon." The impatient voice shook him out of his reverie. It was the guard again, this time holding a folding camp chair which he put down beside the desk. "I'm going to sit here, and you can pretend I've got a gun to your head. You agreed to do this, remember?"

"Uh, y-yes, sir." He poured hot water into his plastic mug. "Um, d-do you want a c-c-"

"Of that crap? Get on with your work, and we'll get you some decent coffee, not that decaf rubbish. Sit down and start cracking."

Otacon's hands were shaking as he returned to the desk. He slowly began looking through the embryonic site he was supposed to be testing. All the graphics had been replaced with bright green boxes containing varied patterns of blue hexagons, and all the words had been replaced with either the phrase "Filler text"or "sensitive data" repeated over and over again. "You know, I'd be able to get a much clearer picture of your overall security situation if I could see the actual site."

The guard sat back and folded his arms over his chest. "It's the actual site with all the data removed. I'm sure you can deal with it."

"Hard to tell where I am, that's all..." muttered Otacon, getting down to work. He'd found a data-input area, and was trying a little code injection. May as well start small, no one could accuse him of not being thorough. He flicked the screens back and forth between the website he was testing and his own webspace. "This thing is _full_ of holes."

"It's a level one prototype. You fix everything you find, then we send it to someone else for further testing."

The guard sounded almost drowsy. Otacon wondered if he'd volunteered to watch the new guy just to get a few hours dozing in the warm. Maybe if there was someone in this cell, the other guards wouldn't watch it so closely on their screens. He kept clicking and typing, listening closely to the breathing of the man behind him, wondering if he'd fall asleep. He shifted his typing hand to the other keyboard, thinking he could just try to get something helpful to come up on the web-connected machine.

"Hey, Otacon." The whisper in his ear was soft and full of menace. The programmer felt the blood drain from his face. Without turning around or needing any further instruction he deleted the rows of gibberish he'd typed. "Attaboy," said the guard, settling down again.

Clever ideas? Nosir, not me sir, I love meekly coding websites for the enemies of freedom and democracy.

* * *

"So why can't I see him?" Snake asked, over the sound of running water.

"You can see him after the mission is over."

"I guess you're worried I'll kill him, eh? Better I snap his neck than you cut him to pieces."

"Shut up." The man kicked a cardboard box across the tiled floor towards him. "Get dried and put that on."

It was a sneaking suit, but not a type he'd seen before. It was thin and light, and seemed to be made out of small scales of some adamant metal, overlapped into an impervious and flexible snakeskin armour. The inside of the suit felt like a cotton t-shirt, while the outside was smooth and dark grey, but reflected no light. "Fancy outfit. What's it do?"

"Fuck-all," replied the quartermaster, evenly. "If you get shot, there's no backup. So if you can't complete the mission with cracked ribs, don't rely on the suit."

It was good advice. He pulled on the suit. It felt like winter underwear. There were more clothes in the box, jeans, a sweater, boots... Snake suddenly realised they were his. "You went through my wardrobe, huh? Don't suppose you brought my smokes?"

"Don't get cute."

"They're like a good luck charm. I'd feel a whole lot better if I had some on me."

The man snorted, clearly used to soldiers and their superstitions. "I'll see what I can do."

He was taken to the long, dimly-lit rifle range next, and shown how to use the mercury flechette pistol. It was the most bizarre weapon he'd ever used. His own body heat was stored in its heating coils until he pulled the trigger, when it was used to catalyse a endothermic chemical reaction, freezing a spike of the liquid metal and firing it from the muzzle at considerable velocity. It was the size of a pocket dictionary, and good for two or three shots. The little daggers it fired could pass right through a target chipboard at twenty feet, and when used on a human would leave a small hole and a puzzled coroner.

"The sights are pretty lousy, so I'd get as close to the target as possible if I were you," commented the quartermaster. "Still, it should give you all the firepower you need. Better than on-site procurement."

"And the target?"

"You'll be briefed on the helicopter." They left the rifle range. There were doors at frequent intervals along both sides of the corridors. The place was built like a rabbit-warren. Even if he bolted, Snake would find himself lost in moments and probably dead shortly after that. The men climbed a flight of stairs, the air growing colder with every step. At the top, he was given a padded winter jacket. As he put it on, the other man held a folded wad of blue cloth and a pack of Lucky Strikes just out of reach. "You won't fuck about, now, will you? Because I'd hate to have to fill an acquisition request for a hammer and chisel, knowing they were going to be used on Otacon's toes."

Snake promised not to fuck about. He tucked the cigarettes in his pocket, and tied the long bandanna around his head as the door was unlocked and opened. The clear daylight seemed blinding for a few moments.. Icy air gusted around his face and hands as he walked outside for the first time in a week.

The view was rather spectacularly unimpressive. He'd just exited a grey breeze block shed onto a small hill of rock and ice. Clumps of feeble and depressed-looking bristly grass clung to boulders. Frigid water lapped at the white ice that surrounded the half-mile-wide speck of land. It was as barren and bare an island as anyone could ever hope to be stranded on. Even birds wouldn't nest here, partly because it was too low for seagoing birds and too small to support land-dwelling species, but also because of the daily comings and going of aircraft.

He trudged towards the helicopter standing a few hundred metres away, his hands deep in his pockets. The flechette pistol bumped against his thigh as he walked. There was a figure in an overcoat standing by the Chinook, and as he got closer he could see it was a woman. She reached out to shake his hand, and he numbly offered it.

She was going to be his handler until they got to the city. She described the mission in great technical detail that Snake didn't appear to pay any attention to, told him who he was going to kill, where and when. There was a lot of talk, but it was a long journey. The chopper took them to an airfield, where a light aircraft took them to Anchorage, where they a got a plane to Los Angeles, where another plane took them to Washington DC. It wasn't until the car journey to the hotel that she stopped describing the many and various ways they were tracking his progress, and which bits they'd cut off Otacon if it looked like he was getting any funny ideas.

"I'm still surprised you're trusting me," Snake yawned, stretching across the back seat. "What if I just shot you in the face and took off?"

"You won't do that," she confidently replied. "Where there's life, there's hope, right? You wouldn't throw everything away just to become a fugitive." She was smiling, not unkindly. "Otacon's waiting for you. You want to see him again, don't you?"

He fell silent, thinking about how much crap this all was. The car (black, German, built for motorways without speed limits, not crawling through inner-city traffic) pulled up outside the Capital Hilton, and he sat there, waiting for her to get out first and point a gun at him.

She leaned over the back of her seat, holding out a wad of ten-dollar bills to him. "Okay! I'll contact you tomorrow afternoon. See you then!"

"Wait, what?"

"Haven't you been listening to a word I've said? Go and check in under the name Brook."

He stared at her, then the money. "What's this for?"

"Dinner," she said, with a note of exasperation.

"So, what, I can just go anywhere I like?"

"As long as you're at the Washington Convention Centre by 2:30 pm tomorrow."

He got out of the car and walked up the steps, feeling stupid and lost and tired. He used their ridiculous fake name at the check in desk, and was given a room key. It was an ugly, chintzy room, and he lay on the bed without taking his boots off for a long time, not thinking of anything. When he woke up he expected it to be light outside, but the alarm clock's green-lit display told him he'd only been asleep for an hour.

It was enough to clear his head. He got up and turned on the light. There was a sheaf of leaflets and maps on the dresser, all about the conference he was supposed to be attending tomorrow. The name of the man he was targeting had been discretely underlined. He made himself a coffee and sat down in the floral-pattern armchair to study them more closely, deciding on a plan for tomorrow.

Snake didn't know anything about the target, and didn't want to. He suspected they were a nobody, and the Patriots were just testing their new toy. He found he could slip easily back into taking orders without thinking about them, and it would have made him angry at himself, but he was crushing every feeling, had been since the girl was shot. Besides, the betrayal had been made. He'd traded everything he'd worked for in exchange for Otacon – who was still in danger, still held by the enemy – and now there was nothing to do but the task set before him.

It would be tricky. There would be lots of witnesses, lots of cameras, lots of police. You could always just walk up and blow the man away, then run like hell... but if that was what the Patriots wanted, they wouldn't have sent a sneaking specialist. He'd have to get the man alone. There might be air ducts into the bathroom.

He spread the maps and diagrams in front of him, turning the information over in his mind and drinking his coffee. It had been smart of them to give him this time alone, as crazy as it had looked. No-one could plan with a US Army health and safety expert droning at them while the twelve-seater aircraft bucked wildly in pockets of turbulence.

There was probably a camera in this room. There certainly weren't any books. There was a television, but he wasn't that desperate yet. He counted the money in his pocket. Even subtracting what he'd need to buy tomorrow morning, there was plenty left, unless they expected him to make his own way back. He left the jacket in his room, but kept the body armour on, hot as it was, and went out. Alcohol was briefly tempting, but he wasn't that stupid. Instead he got burgers and more cigarettes, and a paperback novel that didn't look too bad.

He didn't feel a giddy rush of freedom. He preferred the cold, clean air of Alaska to any crowded city, otherwise he'd have made his living in Dubai, or Johannesburg. It was superficially good to be able to wander where he wanted, but he missed Hal, and this evening of faux-freedom just brought his absence into sharper relief.

He returned to the hotel room and spent the evening reading in the bath. After he'd dozed off and dropped the book in the water a few times, he dried himself off and brushed his teeth before going to bed. It was soft and wide and warm, and he just had time to think about how he'd never get to sleep before he did.

* * *

The next morning was sunny, and even in the middle of a city you could tell it was spring. Snake looked up at the blossoming trees as he went to find breakfast. He felt dazed and focussed at the same time. Waiting for the shooting to start was always the hardest part, especially in a city full of tourists, and even more so when you were now an agent of the shadowy powers that secretly ruled the world. He wandered around parks and museums, letting time pass until the time he was due to be at the rendezvous point.

The bizarre pistol was in his pocket, absorbing his body heat, ready for when it would be needed. He realised he was habitually moving stealthily, joining crowds of people as they moved towards the shopping malls and tourist attractions, but who was he hiding from? He was sure that if he was spotted, the Patriots would have no trouble covering up their involvement. If he was killed, perhaps they'd grant Otacon a clean death, fast and painless, like a sniper bullet to the head...

"Hello, Snake," came the woman's calm, cheerful voice. "Your heart rate's really high. Are you ready to go? You'll need to find a back way into the centre. The target arrived by car an hour ago."

Above him, one of the giant windows of the convention centre exploded outwards in a gout of flame and twinkling glass. People started to scream and panic. Passing cars slewed to a halt, colliding with one another. Policemen ran into the building, pulling out guns and radios. Smoke billowed from the shattered window. The codec beeped.

"Change of plan, Snake. Use the front door," came her voice again, no less calm.

They hadn't said anything to him about a giant exploding distraction, but what did he know? With his hand on the pistol in his pocket, he ran through the crowds surging in and out of the massive doors. In the distance, he could here more muffled explosions, and scattered gunfire – this place had changed in an instant from a convention centre to a warzone.

He knew where he was going, and the corridors and halls were clearly signposted, but the mass of screaming humanity was impeding him. More than one person had shouted something along the lines of, "you're going the wrong way!" at him. Didn't matter. The hordes were beginning to thin out as he got further into the building. Everyone would have been evacuated, but he remembered where the nearest fire exit to the conference room he wanted was. He burst through the door and into the empty room, and was going to leap over the table and sprint out of the still-swinging exit, when something small and fast and very strong barrelled into his side.

He was knocked to the floor, and they skidded into a row of fibreboard displays that clattered down around them. His attacker knelt on his chest, not heavy enough to pin him down, but the gun they held against his cheekbone was convincing enough. In their other hand, they held a mobile phone six inches away from his face.

The message on the screen was, "You're coming with me."


	9. Chapter 9

Hal and Dave are owned by Hideo Kojima. Konami does not endorse the theft of aircraft.

* * *

Echoes

"Oh, _no_. You're getting the fuck off me." He rolled to one side, and took the pistol out of his pocket. The small creature went flying, but every shadow in the room suddenly seemed to solidify and stand up.

The first one got to their feet and typed a new message. "You have three shots and no spare ammunition."

There must be two hundred of them crammed into that room, making it feel a lot smaller, eyes glittering behind the slits in their masks. He snarled. "She's dead. I don't know who told you to fetch her, or why, but you're too late."

Another stepped forward, holding a phone out. "We know. What happened?"

"I don't know! Some mysterious son of a bitch shows up at my house and snipes her, then Otacon and I are taken prisoner."

The one with the gun stood motionless, watching him. The rest started typing out messages and showing them to each other. Snake clenched his fists in frustration. "I don't have time for this! They're going to kill Otacon. The man that was in here, where did he go?"

"They means the P?" Asked the guard, typing without taking their eyes off Snake.

"Yes." Probably. He hoped there weren't two shadowy organisations that began with P in the world. "You have to let me go. I swear I didn't kill her."

Their thumb blurred briefly. "Why did you take her?"

"She was a kid in a cage!" He was almost shouting, his voice all the louder for being the only one in the room. "What was I supposed to do, leave her? She was just some helpless, retarded experiment!"

The clicking of key-pressing halted abruptly. Many pairs of hard, green eyes swivelled to fix on him. There was a tense pause while one of them typed out a message for him. "What do you mean? Could she write?"

"Odd words. Nothing that made any sense." He hadn't thought the atmosphere could get any colder, but it did. They seemed to be waiting for him to go on. "When I found her she was practically catatonic. She was scared of everything she recognised, and deaf." The words were pouring into a black hole. The distant sounds of running and gunshots seemed to recede. "Uh... she liked my dogs. Don't suppose you found out what happened to them?"

There was no murmuring this time, just a rustling of cloth as they tensed. The one with the gun typed out, "A man called Rasmuson has them. They ran to him after we took her body."

Safe. Small pockets of fear in his chest were released. "Good," he said, weakly. "What are you going to do now? I don't want to have to fight you, but I will."

The leader gazed at the man, a head taller and three times their size, as if appraising them. They were typing at the same time. "You are Solid Snake, the world's greatest mercenary."

"So they say." It was a laborious way to hold a conversation, waiting for them to type the next sentence.

"We're going to kill everyone who hurt her. Do you want to come with us?"

He stared at the short, wiry figure, their fingers without nails curled around the black plastic of the phone. The rest were streaming out of the doors and windows, making their way from shadow to shadow outside. "What the hell _are_ you?"

They pointed to their chest with their thumb, then extended their fist and moved it in an arc.

"What's that, your secret handshake?"

"My name. Call me Driver," they typed.

"I didn't mean -" He hesitated. It might be the best answer he got. She was already walking away. "Hey! If I don't do what they say, they're going to kill my partner. You understand that, don't you?"

Their thumb blurred over the keypad, and they turned to show him the screen. "That'd be pretty stupid. He's the premiere hacker/programmer of our times. We'd be amazed if he wasn't hacking/programming right now."

"They told me he was dispensable," growled Snake.

"I bet they told him that about you," they typed. "Keep them all in cages and threaten one with the other. It's the P motto." There was a pause as they typed some more. "We're going to the prison island and killing everyone there. You can trust the P to look after Otacon, or you can come with us."

"I'm coming with you," he said, jogging after the retreating ninja-like figures. "How do you know where it is?"

They moved past buildings, alarms and yells still loud in the distance. "We already triangulated the signals from your codec to your handlers," they typed, "and from them to the receiving stations all over the world. By eliminating everywhere we could investigate, we were left with a few possibilities, which we planned to eliminate by interrogating you."

"Interrogate? Sure." He realised they were walking towards the delivery entrance, where the lorries were parked. "Are you sure this is the right way? I don't see any of your buddies, and we need to move before any of them work out what's happening."

"Was it cold and dark, or hot with scorpions?"

"Cold and dark."

She pulled her mask off, and opened up the back of the lorry they were walking past. Dozens of completely identical girls sat in front of banks of computers, or stacks of weapons. They blinked identical eyes in the sudden ray of light. One of them waved. It was like opening your garage door to find it had been invaded by raccoons, looking up at you with their identically-marked faces, but there were spanners in their hands, and a cold fusion generator in the middle of the floor.

Driver pointed up. The others made signs of acknowledgement. She buckled the canvas closed, then continued round to the cab and gestured for Snake to go first before she climbed into the drivers seat. The engine rumbled to life, and they calmly and carefully pulled away from the building.

"So..." He stared at her. He and Liquid were clones, but you couldn't mistake them for each other. These things were _identical_. "This is why you're called Driver, huh?"

It probably wasn't safe to text and drive at the same time, but at least she didn't take her eyes off the road. "It's a very loose translation. Until we found 1/ic's body, I was known as 2/ic."

1/ic. Standard military shorthand for first in command. "Was that her name?"

The girl glanced at him. To his shock, there were tears in her eyes. Looking back at the road, she held her finger up to the side of her head and tapped it against her temple, then held it there for a moment. Snake thought it looked like a cross between a salute and the standard sign for 'I've got an idea'. She must have been important to these things. He decided to leave the subject for now, or at least until she wasn't driving a big-rig down a busy freeway.

Besides, there were other things he wanted to know. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. Then he burst out, "What the hell would anyone need two hundred identical mutants for?"

This question was apparently a less sensitive subject, but took a long time to answer. "They didn't mean to get so many," she typed as she navigated traffic in her eighteen-wheeler. "The normal success rate of cloning is low. Back in the eighties, it was less than three per cent. They made five hundred zygotes, using adult muscle cells from their soldiers in place of egg cells to save time and money, and female DNA because it would be crazy to try and make successful clones with only one of each chromosome. They expected fifteen viable embryos. They got two hundred."

He studied it closely. "What's this part about the female DNA?"

She took her phone back and typed again. "Male cell nuclei XY, female XX If a piece of DNA messes up we have a spare copy of it on the other chromosome, whereas guy screwed."

"Oh." Well, that was really crappy news. "What about advanced ageing?"

"A myth. Cells are smart. Telomeres regenerate. Research indicates clones might even have more."

Snake sat back as they drove peacefully along the freeway. Driver opened the window and started whistling, and it was almost as strange to hear her making a sound as it was to watch as a fifteen-year-old girl at the wheel of a big-rig. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the route he'd taken in the prison, engraving it into his head. He'd have to find Otacon in subterranean tunnels filled with smoke and screams, and the more he could do from instinct, the better. When he looked out of the window again, he realised they were driving through an airport. The lorry was trundling past jumbo jets. "Are we at an airfield?"

"BWI Airport," she typed. "Stealing a plane."

"Huh." That made sense. He rubbed his bristly chin. "I guess we could scale up the side and hide ourselves on board, wait until we were in the air, cut radio communications, take out the air marshal, and order the pilot to fly us to the middle of nowhere. You're just gonna incapacitate the passengers, right?"

She shook her head, and pulled the juggernaut to a halt beside a Boeing 747. Leaned on the steering wheel, she typed, "Just wait." After fifteen minutes or so, several people carrying mops came down the steps from the cabin. Another five minutes, and the fuel truck came along.

"What are we waiting for?" Snake asked, starting to get annoyed with her mysterious ways. "Someone to come and ask us what we're doing?"

She just turned to him, shook her head, and smiled. At length, the fuel truck disengaged its hose and drove away again. Without warning or hesitation, a flood of short ninjas carrying computer equipment and canvas-wrapped bundles of assault rifles scurried from the back of Drivers' lorry and swarmed up the steps the cleaning staff had left. Driver opened the door and hopped out, and Snake followed her.

Watching the clones work was an education in synchronisation. By the time he ran up the steps, they were wiring the inside of the plane for long-range transmitting and receiving, and re-networking their disassembled computers. A man in a vaguely military police-style uniform was lying, neatly bound and gagged, by the door. "Do you things have telepathic powers, or something?"

Driver tapped the back of her head, which he thought for a moment meant "yes," until he realised it meant "codec". Two clones grabbed the security officer, carried him down the stairs, locked him in the lorry cabin, and ran back into the plane. The metal staircase was kicked away, the door was slammed shut, and the vehicle started to taxi towards the runway.

He went into the cockpit, although it wasn't like he didn't know what the pilot looked like already. The co-pilot caught sight of him, and waved. Then she pointed at a seat and moved her hand from shoulder to hip, telling him to strap himself in. Looking out of the canopy, he expected to see people pointing and screaming and diving out of the way, but no, the aircraft was rolling along like any other on the airfield, moving slowly towards the runway.

"You know, this won't work twice," he called. He was amazed it had worked once. They'd be sending the F – 22's after them the second they were airborne.

She just told him to sit down again, more urgently, as the plane bean to accelerate. The take-off was smooth and clone at the control column seemed to know what she was doing, but he still couldn't relax. The squeak of a hostess trolley suddenly cut over the rumble of the engine. A clone was wheeling it up the aisle, but instead of microwaved food, it was neatly stacked with weaponry. The girl pushing it waved a phone at him.

"Lock & load," it said.

He began picking through the arsenal. "Where'd you get all this stuff?"

She typed out a message. "If I said high stakes poker games, would you believe me?"

The weapons were largely Kalashnikov variety assault rifles, and the AK was a really great rifle, could take a hell of a lot of punishment, but they were a little less impressive on the accuracy stakes, and this was the first time he'd been in the same room as the clones without them trying to kill him, and the idea of trying to rescue Otacon in the middle of a haze of ricocheting bullets fired by insane ninja-clones made his eyes water. "What's your name?" He asked the girl.

She held one finger beside her eye, and arced it back to her ear.

"Oh. Where's Driver?" She looked blank, and pointed vaguely at the pilot. "No, I mean..." He copied the hand-sign she'd shown him.

Recognition dawned, and she jerked her thumb over her shoulder. Snake equipped himself with an AK 74 and a SIG-Sauer pistol, and the girl handed clips of ammunition towards him. He climbed over the back of his seat to get round the trolley, and walked down the fuselage to the standard class section. Some clones were seated in front of computers, but the general feverish activity had died down. A sheet of polythene had been tacked to the wall. One of them was writing on it with a marker pen, and seemed to be coordinating everything.

"Driver?" Pausing in her scribbling, she turned and waved. "What's the plan?"

She pointed to a drawing which Snake realised was the entry shed on top of the island. Then she moved her hand away, rapidly spreading her fingers. She picked up the AK lying on the seat beside her and clutched it to her chest, hunching over as if creeping along, and walked her fingers down through the shed on her picture. Abruptly, she straightened up and waved her rifle in the air.

Her description did nothing to allay Snake's fears. "And what about Otacon?"

The girl picked up her phone. "You'd better find him fast. We don't want to hurt him again."

"Why'd you poison him?" He asked, sitting down opposite her.

She perched on top of the headrest of one of the seats and began typing. "I'm sorry. Mistaken identity. We thought you were working for the P."

"I guess they would have moved her around a lot to keep you from getting her, huh? Maybe that place just had the facilities to hold her," he mused.

Driver showed him the glowing green screen again, but this time her hand was trembling. "She was afraid of us, wasn't she?"

He looked up at her, but her head was down and her face was in shadow. "Yeah. I think so."

She dropped the phone and pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

"But," he continued, reaching for his smokes. "She healed Otacon. She still knew how to do that. So she couldn't have been all gone. I mean... she was still cleaning up your messes, right?"

The girl suddenly shook, and Snake wondered if she was crying. When he heard the high-pitched squeaking sound, he was pretty sure she was laughing. Without looking up, she reached for her phone. "What else is 1/ic for?" she typed, more slowly.

He snorted. "Kiss me goodnight, sergeant major. Anyway, that's your job now," he said, putting a cigarette in his mouth and fishing in his pockets for his lighter. "You seem to be doing alright. Was she the one who got you out of the lab?"

Driver tipped her head on one side, giving him a shrug and a lopsided grin. She jumped to her feet and made a sign – sticking out two fingers of her left hand, like a gun, then holding it up against her chest and banging her right fist into her left wrist – then jumped over the back of the seat.

"Yeah, yeah," muttered Snake. "Lock and load, right?" He slouched in his seat, lighting up his cigarette and inhaling deeply. Goddamn mental psycho clones. They were just going to land on that tiny, bumpy island, jump off the plane, bust into the prison and kill everyone. What a great plan.

Two hundred clones. Christ, and two of Big Boss had seemed too many. Imagine making all those packed lunches.

"Wait," he said out loud, opening his eyes as the thought struck him. "Who are you clones o-"

Someone threw a flak jacket at him. All them were putting on two or three layers of body armour and helmets with face-covering visors. Most carried the ubiquitous AK, but some were equipped with MP5 submachine guns, and some even carried long-barrelled sniper rifles. A few had small, rectangular shields strapped to their left forearm. They had pistols and grenades and clips of ammunition in their uniform webbing. They were a pictorial definition of the phrase "loaded for bear," and Snake was hoping like hell they were as good at shooting the right people as they were at being creepy.

They didn't appear to do anything except all stand up, buckling on their armour and equipment, and occasionally nodding to each other, or exchanging short series of hand signals. Still, the air in the cabin felt like it was going crackle with their silence. It took an effort of will to say anything, especially something along the lines of, "I'm scared that you'll be an incompetent load of psychopaths."

"Look," said Snake, uneasily. "He's a guy with glasses, shorter than me, light sorta greyish-blond hair -"

A mobile phone was tossed to him. On the screen was written, "We know what Otacon looks like."

And another. "We snuck up on you, didn't we?"

Another arced towards him, and he'd run out of hands. "We won't kill the prisoners," he read, after he'd picked it up.

The sound of the engines got louder, and the landing gear began to grind into the downwards position. Everybody grabbed hold of something as the plane began its descent. There was a brief moment of bounce as the tyres touched the grey concrete of the runway, then a screech and hiss of brakes as the pilot tried to persuade the jumbo to stop much sooner than inertia would like it to.

Before it had even stopped moving, the doors were opened and the ones handling the explosives kicked down the rope ladders, slid to the runway, and ran to the one artificial structure on the island. Forty seconds later, it was a heap of dust, and one hundred and thirty silent troops ran towards the smoking wound. The remainder stayed on or around the aircraft, equipped and alert for threats to their escape route.

The time for all thought was over. Snake ran with them, an assault rifle in his hands, to pick his way down the rubble-strewn steps. There was already gunfire in front of him, deafening in the enclosed space. He could see the smoke and muzzle flashes, but there were rows of black-clad soldiers in front of him, and they were charging forward, undaunted, firing off three-round bursts from their rifles.

At the front, hands were suddenly raised and opened, and the whole host dropped to the ground, pulling Snake with them. He heard the bang of a grenade, then the gunfire started again, and the invading force surged forward. They came to the bottom of the stairs, and while the front row split up and moved down both directions of the corridor, the ones behind began kicking doors open and storming in.

The rest of the host marched or waited patiently for seconds on end, as the pace dictated, but Snake was grinding his teeth with impatience. He kept trying to raise Otacon on the codec, but it wouldn't work here. But they were near the room that lead to the big hall now, and he knew he didn't want to go that way, so when half the remaining horde split off he went with them. Gunfire crackled out ahead of them, from someone firing wildly around a corner. Everyone crouched down and a grenade was tossed down the corridor, bouncing in a mathematically perfect arc to skitter behind the wall before it exploded. The few heavily armoured troops they had with them ran forward, and there were gunshots.

The invaders were thorough and methodical, but the prison guards could be forcing his partner to his knees and shooting him in the head right _now_. Snake ran through the squad of clones, past the bodies on the floor, and yelled, "OTACON!"

He'd expected the girls to be outraged, but they continued on as if nothing had happened, move forward, check the rooms, split up, keep going. Snake pressed himself against the wall and edged around the next corner, no one there. At the next, he caught sight of a flurry of movement and yanked himself back before gunfire stitched a row of holes into the wall behind him. Hollow points, he thought detachedly, to cut down on rebound. He had to put them down before they tossed a grenade. Spraying bullets wildly around the corner with his AK, he stormed around and shot the man in the head with his pistol.

He shouted Otacon's name so loud it tore at his throat, and the echoes got lost in the gunfire and explosions that seemed to characterise any time spent with the clones-girls. He was flinging himself recklessly along the corridors and around corners – he could risk a bullet with the armour he was wearing, but not a grenade.

Behind him, a heavy steel door swung open. He span to face it. A skinny computer nerd edged out, his teeth bared in hate and fear, his arm around an ashen-faced Otacon's neck, and a gun to their head.

"Tell them to let me go," he said, cocking the gun.

The sniper bullet hit him from behind, leaving a neat circular exit wound just above his left temple. Otacon stayed standing, his eyes screwed shut, his ragged breathing the only sound in the stillness. Snake ran forward and put his arms around the man's shoulders, and touched his face, running his fingers over the lines of terror and exhaustion and the day's worth of stubble, and then kissed him.


	10. Chapter 10

Thank you for your reviews! Hal and Dave belong to Hideo Kojima. I don't know if he'll want them back after this.

* * *

Echoes

Hal lay on his stomach on the bed, browsing the news for the past week on his laptop. He was naked, and the air conditioner was humming. He could hear the shower still running over the music spilling out of his speakers; David found the Nevada climate hot to the point of stamina-sapping, and had been standing under a lukewarm shower for the past half-hour. Michael had been telling the truth about one thing, at least.

He'd pulled away from Snake and turned to look at the man's body with no emotion but relief. Twenty metres down the corridor, a sniper dressed head to toe in black was getting to their feet. They were short, but he didn't notice anything else odd about them.

"We're not safe here," Snake had said to them. He was still holding onto Otacon. "You can do this without me. I'm getting him back to the plane."

The sniper gave a thumbs-up, then jerked that thumb over their shoulder. Still clinging onto Snake's hand, Otacon stumbled with him down the corridors, now pockmarked with bullet holes. Loose chips of grey concrete skittered under his feet as they hurried along. He could hear the rattle of gunfire echoing through the twisting tunnels. They passed dead guards, and more black-clad soldiers ran by them.

"Who are they?" He asked in a hoarse gasp.

Snake kept scanning the corridor ahead of them, an assault rifle balanced in his right hand. "You'll see. It's not far."

The air got colder and the smell of smoke and cordite got stronger, until there was a sudden and – to Otacon – blinding light. He scrambled after Snake up a flight of steps that became nothing but rubble at the top, and then he could smell and hear the sea. His teeth were chattering by the time they reached the jumbo jet standing incongruously on the helipad, but his fingers weren't numb enough to stop him from climbing the rope ladder. Panting and shivering, he dragged himself over the edge of the door and into the aircraft.

Twenty girls identical to the deaf-mute Snake had taken from the laboratory were looking at him. Before he could say anything, he found himself picked up and carried into first class. The man kicked the armrests on a row of seats down, and placed Otacon gently on the cushions.

"Okay," said Snake, his voice shaking slightly as he took the smaller man's hands and inspected them. "It's okay. I've got you. You're safe." He reached up to move his fingers through Otacon's hair, feeling for wounds on his scalp, then took the man's face in his hands, looking closely into his eyes for signs of concussion. "What did they do to you?"

"I'm alright," said Otacon.

He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again, then looked over his shoulder to shout at the other occupants of the first class section of the plane. "Hey! Can we get some privacy here?" The girls standing by the doors, holding their assault rifles and scanning the island for incoming danger, ignored him. Turning back to his partner, he knelt down in front of him, putting his hands on their shoulders and meeting his down-turned gaze. "It's alright. I've got you. Tell me what they did."

"Nothing, I'm fine." He smiled at Snake. "I'm alright. They had me code websites for them. They didn't hurt me."

But Snake just looked down, his hands sliding to the man's waist. "Hal," he murmured. "You're hiding something. And I understand. But..."

"No!" Otacon scrunched his hands in his lap, and bent his head. "It's not like that. Nothing like that. The man with the gun, the one that the sniper shot... I thought he was... He made me..." He gave an aching little sigh, and pressed his head against the side of the seat. "I let him give me a blowjob in the shower. I thought he was a prisoner too, but... he wasn't. He... tricked me."

Snake looked up sharply, his eyes widening. Otacon waited for him to get up and walk away with a gruff laugh and a crude joke, and for their relationship to go back to rough caution of two men living together in close quarters. Suddenly, he was crushed into a desperate embrace. "Oh, _fuck_, Hal," he gasped into the man's ear. "I thought they'd-" He didn't say what he'd thought. No need to taint the moment with his imaginings.

Otacon tried to hug him back, but was thwarted. "Do you still need the armour?"

Pulling away, the man undid his boots and kicked them off, then stood up and unbuckled his flak jacket, then stripped off his clothes and peeled a tight black suit away from his body. Wearing only his bandanna, he climbed onto the seat beside Otacon and pulled the man into his lap. "Better?"

Around them, the aircraft was in chaos. Two hundred small, mute girls were trying to contain, pacify and explain what had happened to seventy confused ex-prisoners. In the cockpit, the navigation team was doing some fairly desperate research on all possible landing sites within range before their fuel ran out. They ran silently back and forth until one of them tripped over Snake's clothes and tossed them impatiently at him before scrambling to her feet and continuing on her way.

Then backtracked to take a good, long, hard look at the muscular, naked man, sitting back with his arms around Otacon, kissing him passionately.

They landed in Calgary. The girls were amazing – Hal tried to explain to David what they were doing, the web of hacked airport schedules, telling airport control that the plane was delayed, calling security to the front of the airport, gently tweaking everything to give themselves a niche. They split up there, most of them taking the captives and weaponry to an undisclosed location, but Driver and a few others took the two men on a plane to Las Vegas.

The girls lent him a laptop computer from their stockpile, and somehow found him something other to wear than his stained, grey uniform. He asked what they were, and they told him everything they'd told David. They were going to travel and fight, they wrote on their phones, always moving, carrying everything with them. The mercenaries they would make a little wiser and release; perhaps some of them would be interested in Philanthropy?

"How do you know about Philanthropy?" He'd asked.

They'd grinned at him. Encode everything, they'd written. Nowhere is safe for you now. Trust nothing except each other.

When they reached the hotel, the girls had put their masks on and become Driver's bodyguards. There was a high-stakes poker game, she told them; the two men would be safe here for three days, perhaps a little longer. She'd contact them when they had to move, and pick up their tab.

So that was how they'd got to the Tower Suite, with three days to plan the rest of their life. Hal had immediately ordered Chinese food from room service, and the two men had stuffed themselves and drunk beer and not talked about much. Afterwards, David had decided to open all the windows and stand under freezing jets of water. Wondering how long it would take the man to become accustomed to living away from the Arctic circle, Hal lay down on the bed. He'd taken his clothes off because it was warm, and no-one was watching him, and after the last week, that was enough of a reason.

At length, the shower was turned off. He heard heavy, wet footsteps, and someone rubbing themselves with a towel. The tall, powerful man padded into the bedroom, but Hal was giving an excellent impression of being absorbed in his research. "Feeling better?" He asked.

"Yeah, thanks." Dave sounded like he was grinning as he got on the bed beside the skinny computer programmer. "Catching up on your gay porn?"

"Why, do you want to read it?"

David chuckled. "Nah, I've got plenty right here." He reached over, and stroked the nape of the man's neck. Hal shivered, but didn't look away from his computer. David moved his hand down Hal's back, brushing the lines of fading bruises.

"Are you trying to distract me?"

"Yep."

He tried to ignore David's lips on his skin, tracing a tingly path over the back of his neck. "Forget it. I've been with you for days. This is the first time I've been on the net properly for a week."

"Oh, yeah? So you're gonna pretend I'm not here? I don't know if I'm gonna put up with that kind of behaviour after I got a bunch of crazy, armed clones to bust you out of jail."

"I thought they were avenging their fallen leader." He bit his bottom lip to keep himself from making a sound as David's teeth nipped softly at his earlobe. The heavy, muscular man moved over the programmer's slim, pale frame, pinning him to the quilt, sliding his broad hands under their skinny chest and kissing their shoulder blades. "I-it's not working... I'm ignoring you... Ahh..."

"You're a real ice-princess," David smirked as he worked his way down Hal's body with his hands and lips. He was gratified to see the smaller man trembling under his touch as he knelt between Hal's legs to scatter kisses over the back of his thighs.

Hal opened his mouth to say something, but he felt a soft, damp tongue slide down over his balls, and only managed a low whimper. Unthinkingly, he slid his legs further apart, digging his toes into the quilt as David continued to use his lips and tongue. Fingers touched him, slick and wet, pushing gently at first and then more, harder. He moaned softly, raising himself onto his knees as the man behind him pressed forward, and then there was only David inside him, and David's hand on his cock, and he was panting and twisting his hands in the pillow and crying out wordlessly as he came.

He lay on his side, feeling lightheaded and overwhelmed, pinpricks of sweat all over his body. David muttered swearwords as he pulled the condom off and dropped it into the wastepaper basket by the bed, then turned and took Hal's glasses off before drawing him close and kissing him. They stayed like that for a long time, holding one another.

"I love you," said Hal, dreamily.

David made a rumbling sound deep in his chest, like a laugh crossed with a growl. "I love you, too." With one hand he reached over to the bedside table for his cigarettes. "What were you working on when I came in?"

"Oh... Just following up a lead." And deleting hundreds of junk e-mails from his accounts. "Hank says hi. The girls have been giving him a hand for the past few days, and they seem to have limitless funds, so he's expecting to see results really soon-"

"What was that about a lead?" He asked, slitting the cellophane on the pack with his thumbnail.

"Well, it looks like something fishy's going on with an oil company in Saudi Arabia." Hal took his glasses back, rolled over and pulled the laptop towards him. "I need to do a lot more work before I can give you anything really solid, but just give me a couple of hours and we should be able to set off tomorrow morning. Kit might be a problem, but I'd be surprised if Driver and the others couldn't help us out. They seem to feel really bad about almost killing me. I asked them if they wanted to join, but they just said they'd think about it." His fingers were flying over the keyboard. "Here we go."

David glanced at the screen, then grabbed Hal around the waist. "You know this is probably the last time we'll ever be able to relax, right?"

The man turned to face David, and put his arms around their neck. "I don't know. You're only in danger if you don't know you're hunted. We'll just keep moving."

"Forever?"

"If we need to."

He propped himself up on his elbows, and looked into Hal's eyes. "I really love you."

Hal grinned. "What, you thought you'd have to leave me, like the dogs? I'm in this as much as you are. We're the only people who can stop Metal Gear."

"Nah. We're just the only people who will." David ran his hand over Hal's legs, feeling the new muscle. For all the cruelty and stupidity in the world, people could still surprise you with their strength, sometimes. Ridding the world of the nuclear menace of Metal Gear wasn't just Hal's insane delusion, any more.

It was Philanthropy's insane delusion.


End file.
